Girl or boy: you choose

Keith Pavlischek, fellow at the Center for Public Justice, argues in the latest Capital Commentary that arguments against allowing parents to select the sex of their unborn offspring cannot stand up to the logic of the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade decision:

There is no obvious logical or legal inconsistency in permitting freedom of choice in sex selection before birth while outlawing sexual discrimination after birth. After all, U.S. law has permitted such discrimination before birth for a long time. Under Roe v. Wade, a woman can choose an abortion for whatever reason she wants. On those terms, there would appear to be no moral reason, including objections to sex selection, that could trump her autonomous freedom to choose an abortion, even if the abortion were for the purpose of sex selection.

If the law may not stand in the way of a woman’s choice to destroy a fetus for reasons of sex selection, it is impossible to see how the law might regulate her decision to choose the sex of her child when it does not involve the destruction of the fetus.

If you are offended by the consequences of that logic, too bad. That’s the moral and legal logic of Roe v. Wade. As long as Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, you may be personally opposed to eugenic sex selection, but you simply may not impose your personal, anti-sexist, anti-gender-discrimination morality on the rest of society.