--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Are you saying that if the "free choice" of American parents > > results in a generation that is born 75% female and 25% male, > > that you would > > have no problem with that? (And women say that they can't find > > any good men today!) And that this would not be an appropriate > > area for public intervention? > > Massive straw man, unworthy of reply. See Charlie's posts on the > subject.
I don't think that calling my argument a straw man contributes to positive debate on this subject. I believe that Charlie's point is that such a situation would be unstable in the long run. If a generation of people comes out disproportionately female, then this would create an incentive to produce male children. This perhaps may be true - but doesn't do any good for the people who were born in the disproportionate generation. Secondly, the point doesn't consider the possibility of misaligned incentives. There may be many reason why parents perceive children of one sex to be more desireable than those of another - and those reasons might have nothing to do with adulthood. For instance, parents may perceive that they will enjoy playing games with a female child more than a male child, or that a female child is easier to manage while growing up than a male child, etc. These sorts of cultural perceptions could easily result in misaligned sex ratios persisting into the long term. > > It also raises the question of what rights do unborn children have. > > Are you o.k. with parents aborting children that will have a > > tendency towards homosexuality? Or of only selecting embryos > > for > > implantation that have blond hair or above-average intelligence? > > Or what about only selecting embryos that have below-average > > intelligence? > > We're talking a major expense, John, so the number of procedures > is likely to be limited to either wealthy people or people that > are desperate for a child of a certain sex (not because we favor > one sex over the other but because they have trouble conceiving > one or the other) or want to avoid a > child with a debilitating birth defect that they may be prone to. Leaving aside the number of people doing this because of a birth defect, you do realize that you are essentially arguing that this practice is o.k., so long as only rich people do it? The expense of the procedure shouldn't affect the morality of this procedure. If the procedure is moral and sensible for a few rich people to engage in, then it should be moral and sensible for everyone to engage in - should they have the opportunity. > > The ironic thing is that I just received word today that the pro- > > choice government of Tony Blair is moving today to ban gender- > > selection abortions in the UK. But I guess that that the UK > > wasn't founded on freedom of choice, eh? (Magna Carta and John > > Locke anyone?) To me, its a shame that the pro-choice > > extremists in this country have turned the United States into a > > place where the Chinese > > come to engage in a practice that even the communists have banned > > back in their own country... > > We weren't discussing abortion. Yes we are. We are talking about conceiving a number of children, and "eliminating" the children of the undesired sex. > I would have much more trouble with > abortion along these lines. In fact I would object to it > altogether. I can only hope that you get the opportunity to join me in supporting a ban on sex-selection abortions. > Let me ask you again. Do you think we should tailor our laws to > remedy the shortcomings of the Chinese social system? I still have no idea what you mean by this. I merely think that if the Chinese Communists think that a certain procedure is too gruesome to allow in their own country, that should be a strong tipoff that we shouldn't be allowing it in our own country either. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
