Those aren’t my words but those of Liberal MP and former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh in Saturday’s National Post. He was asked to comment on the questions raised by the death of a toddler in Delta, B.C., allegedly at the hands of her father. The Post article concerns the speculation that the two-year old was murdered for the crime of being a girl and her parent’s third daughter. The tradegy raises the ugly issue of gender selection and it was in this context that Mr. Dosanjh made these comments: “What does it say about us as human beings? You have a situation in India and here, where we commit feticide and we kill girls when they’re of tender age. Then we kill them and abuse them after marriage. And it has to stop.” 

It seems that Mr. Dosanjh is otherwise pretty firmly pro-choice …  except when parents are choosing not to have a daughter. At one level, that kind of makes sense. It’s pretty obvious that gender selection abortions devalue the sex selected for elimination. And Mr. Dosanjh, and many others otherwise committed to “choice”, recognize that effect and are repelled by it. 

But doesn’t this mean that a woman’s freedom to choose isn’t unlimited after all?

If we don’t want to send a negative message about the value of girls in our society by allowing them to be aborted, what are we content to say about the disabled, the “less than perfect” fetus, which seems to be such an acceptable target for abortion? What are we saying about children in general with an unrestricted abortion license?

I guess my question for Mr Dosanjh is, why aren’t these things feticide also?