Ross Douthat had a head scratcher of a column yesterday positing that sex-selective abortion is the "result" of women's empowerment, offering India as an example:
The spread of sex-selective abortion is often framed as a simple case of modern science being abused by patriarchal, misogynistic cultures. Patriarchy is certainly part of the story, but as Hvistendahl points out, the reality is more complicated — and more depressing.
Thus far, female empowerment often seems to have led to more sex selection, not less. In many communities, she writes, “women use their increased autonomy to select for sons,” because male offspring bring higher social status. In countries like India, sex selection began in “the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” before spreading down the income ladder.
If "women's empowerment" led to sex-selective abortion, that would offer a powerful argument against abortion since everyone agrees sex-selective abortion is bad. The problem is that even abortion rights supporters think sex-selective abortion is bad, and the reason is because sex-selective abortion is obviously reflective of coercion by culture if not the state. Despite having elected female heads of state, Indian culture retains many patriarchal elements, chief among them the fact that having female children is really expensive because parents are expected to pay the families of their daughters' husbands elaborate dowries.
As Michelle Goldberg put it in her book The Means of Reproduction, "In a modernizing but still rigidly patriarchal society, boys hold out the prospect of a lifetime of economic security for their parents while girls, who will join the household of their in-laws, are widely seen as simply a drain on expenses."
Perhaps it seems obvious, but that kind of blatant economic incentive against having female children doesn't exist in the United States. Does Douthat really believe that's the result of women being "less empowered" here? Simply making abortion legal doesn't amount to "women's empowerment," especially in a society where women are coerced into ending pregnancies by their husbands or society at large.
Douthat doesn't mention this at all when dismissing patriarchy as merely "part of the story," but female children being aborted because they're by definition a financial liability actually suggests that "patriarchy" is a pretty huge part of the story. Rather than "female empowerment" being the issue, the problem is that women are literally valued less than men, a problem denying women the right to decide when to carry children to term wouldn't actually solve. It's that element of coercion that feminists rail against, whether it come in the form of outlawing abortion entirely or a culture where women are literally valued less than men. Sadly, many of those who are anti-abortion regard coercion as distasteful only when it might involve forcing a woman to have an abortion, rather than banning her from having one. Indeed, if you believe women shouldn't be able to make their own decisions about their bodies, than the solution to this problem seems rather simple.
