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San Francisco might become the first city to explicitly condemn sex-selective abortion bans, if a resolution introduced Tuesday passes through the city’s Board of Supervisors.

David Chiu, president of the board, the legislative body of the City and County of San Francisco, introduced the resolution opposing sex-selective abortion bans on the basis that they perpetuate racial stereotypes that are harmful to women and communities of color.

Republicans in Congress have tried for years to pass bans both on sex-selective and race-selective abortions. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who has introduced versions of the same bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, several years in a row, called sex-selective abortion bans and the fight against abortion “the civil rights struggle that will define our generation.”

Such bans, Chiu said in the resolution, perpetuate “false and harmful racial stereotypes that such laws are necessary to stop an influx of Asian immigrants from spreading this practice, and that Asian American communities do not value the lives of women.”

Sex-selective abortion bans also encourage the profiling of patients on the basis of their ethnicity or...