House panel considers bill to ban gender- and race-based abortions
- Feb 8, 2012 -
As the faith community remains rightly incensed about the Obama administration’s recent mandate that employers must offer free sterilization and contraceptives—including abortifacients—under their health insurance plans, a lesser known but likewise important life-related matter took center stage this week in a congressional committee: gender- and race-based abortions.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, members on the House Judiciary Committee considered the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 3541), which would bar abortions on the basis of gender and race. The panel acted on several amendments but recessed without a final vote on the bill.
“I hope for a day when all children, regardless of race or color, all children because they are children will be protected,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), chief sponsor of the bill, when introducing the bill in December. “But right now regardless of what the long term impact of this might be the short term impact is very simple: Can we not agree that aborting a child based on a child’s race or sex is wrong?” The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission shares this sentiment. “Congress has an obligation to cease its silent approval of these actions through its inaction,” wrote ERLC President Richard Land to Rep. Franks in a Dec. 6 letter of support for the bill.
The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, as the bill is fully titled, would authorize criminal penalties for individuals who perform gender-selection or race-selection abortions. In addition, anyone found guilty of coercing women into such abortions or accepting funds for these types of abortions would also face criminal charges that could result in fines or imprisonment. Also under PRENDA, as the bill is commonly known, doctors and other health professionals who suspect gender- or race-motivated abortions would be required to report such activity. Largely victimized, women who undergo such abortions would not face civil penalties.
PRENDA bears the names of two individuals who stood for the rights of certain individuals who faced discrimination on the basis of their innate characteristics. Susan B. Anthony fought as a leading suffragist at a time when women were denied the right to vote. The Civil War-era Frederick Douglass fought for the full equality of blacks at a time when the nation was divided over the issue of slavery. Both reformers were integral in helping to reshape the public mind and the political will on once contentious issues.
In that spirit, proponents of PRENDA seek to formally acknowledge and protect the inherent dignity of the smallest among us—the unborn—from discrimination on account of what some consider the “wrong” gender or race. The U.S. government has gone on record calling upon foreign governments to enact such laws in their own lands. Yet, remarkably, the U.S. has no such federal prohibition on its books. This sends an unfortunate mixed message. And it makes the United States a safe haven for individuals seeking to engage in such abortions.
Most Americans are familiar with China’s one-child policy. They well understand that girl babies are routinely aborted as parents instead seek a male child to carry on the family name. But few realize that this barbaric practice is not isolated to distant lands such as Asia. It has reached America’s shores. As noted in PRENDA’s findings, a 2008 study—conducted by two Columbia University economists using U.S. Census data and published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences—found “evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage.”
Nor is the occurrence of abortions on account of race an isolated practice unknown in the United States. Multiple accounts point to its prevalence in the “land of the free.” Planned Parenthood, for example, is currently under investigation for allegations that some of its clinics have been engaged in race-selective abortion. A series of audio tapes released in 2007 caught several affiliates of the nation’s largest abortion provider on tape agreeing to accept donations designated specifically for the abortion of black babies.
Only three states have laws banning gender-based abortions, and just one state, Arizona, has banned race-based abortions. The public, however, is overwhelmingly supportive of such laws. On the question of gender-based abortions, 86 percent of Americans agree that this heinous practice should be illegal, according to a 2006 Zogby poll.
The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act is not—or at least should not be—a controversial measure on Capitol Hill. It is high time that the federal government lead both the nation and the world by example by officially banning these heinous abortion practices and holding perpetrators accountable.
If you agree, please urge your representative to cosponsor and call for a vote on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011 (H.R. 3541).
Further Learning
Learn more about: