Report Debunks Conservative Case for Sex-Selection Abortion Bans

This week, the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, and Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, released an important new report that corrects the significant misinformation lawmakers rely on to introduce and pass sex-selection abortion bans around the country.

Over the past five years, more than 60 sex-selection abortion bills have been introduced both at state and federal levels. These bans, often proposed in the context of race or with legislation that includes race-selection bans as well, are steeped in stereotypes that are designed to provide an entry-point into banning abortions entirely. In South Dakota, for example, lawmakers proposed the state’ssex-selection abortion ban in response to changing demographics, claiming an increase in Asian immigrants would fuel an increase in acceptance of sex-selective abortions. Meanwhile, in Arizona, lawmakers attempted to use harmful racial stereotypes against Black women to justify its ban, citing higher rates of abortion among Black women as evidence that women of color were being coerced into having more abortions than other women as part of some racist plot...