Can a new bill calling for equality in the womb thwart child sacrifice based on race or gender?

As Americans, left and right, we oppose China’s one child per family policy because it leads to vast numbers of forced abortions, an extreme violation of human rights.  While the U.S. has no official policy on the number of children per family, a “family planning” facility will often persuade a woman of color to limit the size of her family by eliminating her child.

Nearly 80% of abortion facilities are located in major metro areas where the population of African-American citizens is concentrated. Those pushing abortion are often blind to the dignity of a woman, regardless of race, and sometimes fail to recognize the inestimable value of the preborn female, when a male is wanted instead.

Because many in the abortion industry target minority neighborhoods resulting in a greater loss of minority lives, and because those with a “family planning” mentality may support the idea of sacrificing a daughter to make room for the first-born son, it has become necessary for Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-2, R) to sponsor, along with 66 co-sponsors, the Susan B. Anthony Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011 (PreNDA).

In speaking before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Congressman Franks shared that an Hispanic baby is three times more likely to be aborted than a white child, while African-American babies are five times more likely to be aborted. He also noted that one out of two African American babies is aborted.

In addition to race factoring into the abortion decision, there are indicators that gender is also considered. Columbia University researchers analyzed year-2000 census data in 2008 and found “evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage.” Researchers further observed, “Since 2005, sexing through a blood test as early as five weeks after conception has been marketed directly to consumers in the U.S. raising the prospect of sex selection becoming more widely practiced in the near future.”

“Nearly nine out of ten Americans oppose abortion for reasons of sex selection,” according to testimony by Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher, “but such acts of gender violence are neither illegal nor uncommon in our country.”

Mosher highlighted research by an Asian-Indian physician, Sunita Puri, who interviewed 65 immigrant Indian women in the U.S. who had pursued fetal sex selection. She found that a shocking 89% of the women carrying girls aborted during the study and that nearly half had previously aborted girls.

These women told Puri of how they were the victims of family violence; how their husbands or in-laws had shoved them around, kicked them in the abdomen, or denied them food, water, rest in an attempt to make them miscarry the girls they were carrying.

Searching for common ground, Congressman Franks would like everyone to agree that no child should die because he is the wrong race or because she is a little girl instead of a little boy.  He introduced PreNDA to prohibit discrimination against the unborn in the form of selective abortion on the basis of sex or race.

“The Act clarifies that the mother may not be prosecuted or held civilly liable under the Act,” according to testimony by Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Steve Aden, “and thus the private right of action provisions strike only at the commercial activity of providing abortion, which clearly substantially impacts interstate commerce.”

Contact your Representative to encourage him/her to become a co-sponsor of PreNDA (HR 3541). You can reach any member through the congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121

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