This article refers to sex selection as an “abuse” of rights. In my opinion, that’s a good place to begin discussions about what is currently an unrestrained use of legality (ie. abortion anytime, anyplace, for any reason).

While it is a woman’s right in Canada to continue only wanted pregnancies, exercising rights and abusing them are two very different things. Making an inherently sexist decision based on the fact that it’s your right as a woman is definitely an abuse of that freedom.

Compared to China and India, where millions of female fetuses are aborted, and many girls who are born are told they are unwanted, the problem may seem small—but that doesn’t make it less important.

While I disagree that immigration is responsible for Canada’s abortion rate, and while any abortion because a child is “unwanted” is an abuse of rights, articles like this give me hope that the nation is beginning to publicly question what’s been happening behind closed hospital doors. The number of comments these articles get is also an indicator that people want to discuss the current legislation.

Dennis Miller once explained that he considered “everyone and everything to be comedic fair game, except for the helpless.” You’d think Down Syndrome kids and dead babies would count as helpless. But no – some people simply have no shame.

Dec. 19, 2011. Fredericton, New Brunswick:  Pro-life students at the University of New Brunswick’s (UNB) Fredericton campus were shocked last week to learn from their student newspaper, TheBrunswickan, that their club would not be recognized by the Student Union due to a “lack of information”.

“The whole situation has been incredibly frustrating,” says Amanda Magee, the President of UNB Students for Life.  “We have given the Student Union information.  We have offered to be present to answer questions.”

UNB Students for Life applied for club status in October, not anticipating any issues given that a pro-life club is active at the UNB Saint John campus and had also existed at the Fredericton campus only a few years previous.  When their contact on council, Andrew Martel, requested additional information from the club, they replied, ensuring that the information would be received before the next Council meeting on November 20th.  Despite this, Andrew Martel stated at the meeting, according to the Nov. 20th minutes, that he did not receive any information from the club.

“We’ve had to rely on the student newspaper and the minutes of the meetings to piece things together,” adds Magee.  “And the Dec. 4th minutes still aren’t available so we’re not entirely sure what happened.”

Read the entire press release here.

NEW YORK — The practice of sex-selection abortion, usually targeting a female fetus due to parental preference for a son, has few defenders in the United States. Yet a proposed federal ban is drawing vehement opposition from liberal advocacy groups who call it a veiled attempt to undermine broader abortion rights.

The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., would outlaw abortions done on the basis of gender or race. Women who had such abortions would not be penalized but those who performed them — or pressured a woman into having one — would face up to five years in prison.

A new test was introduced Monday that can determine if a fetus has Down syndrome using a sample of the mother’s blood. [...]

…most women who find they are carrying a fetus with Down syndrome, which causes mild to moderate mental retardation, terminate the pregnancy. [...]

“Will we slowly start to see babies born with Down syndrome disappear?’’ asked Dr. Skotko, who has a sister with the condition.

He and some colleagues recently published the results of a survey in which nearly 99 percent of people with Down syndrome said they were happy with their lives.

Parents of such children also said they were happy. About 79 percent of parents said their outlook on life was more positive because of their child.

There is also an upsurge in efforts to develop drugs to improve the learning ability of those with Down syndrome. One of the drug researchers, Alberto Costa, who has a daughter with the condition, told The New York Times Magazine:

“It’s like we’re in a race against the people who are promoting those early screening methods. These tests are going to be quite accessible. At that point, one would expect a precipitous drop in the rate of birth of children with Down syndrome. If we’re not quick enough to offer alternatives, this field might collapse.’’

  On October 3, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted the “Prenatal sex selection” resolution, which says that the disproportion in sex selection is “alarming” in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Albania. [...]

The PACE resolution appeals to “investigate the causes and reasons behind skewed sex ratios at birth; to step up efforts to raise the status of women in society” throughout the whole territory of Armenia. [...]

Doctor-gynecologist at the Armenian-American Mammography Wellness Center Nelly Avagyan’s experience showed that majority of abortions is because of a child’s sex.

“This is an Armenian way of thinking – to have sons by all means, even though abortions of boys are also registered, but the number of aborted girls prevails,” Avagyan says.

Anyway, this article from India on a young mother forced to abort twice, who hung herself with the third pregnancy after her in-laws ordered another abortion…because the baby was a girl. Just so long as they have access to abortion though. So she can make a choice as to whether to end just her baby’s life and/or her own, too.