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WASHINGTON, May 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A bill to outlaw abortions based on a child’s gender received a strong majority of votes in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday but failed to gain the two-thirds margin of support needed for passage. The House voted 246-168 in favor of H.R. 3541, known as the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA). 226 Republicans and 20 Democrats (Altmire, Barrow, Boren, Cooper, Costello, Critz, Cuellar, Donnelly, Garamendi, Holden, Kissell, Lipinksi, Lynch, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson, Rahall, Reyes, Ross of AR, and Shuler) voted yea; while 161 Democrats and seven Republicans (Amash, Bass of NH, Bono Mack, Dold,...

President Barack Obama appears to oppose the ban on sex-selection abortions that the House of Representatives debated yesterday and will be voting on today. ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted a new report indicating President Obama opposes the bill to prohibit performing or coercing abortions to eliminate unborn babies of an undesired sex. Tapper raised the question at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, but did not receive a respond to his question about Obama’s position. “I will have to take that as well. Been focused on other things, but I will get back to you,” Jay Carney said...

As I type, the House of Representatives is debating the future of civil rights: a girl's right to life itself. Is it OK to choose to destroy a healthy unborn child simply because you or your husband prefer a boy? Should it be legal in this country? The Constitution gives to Congress the power to enforce the 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection by appropriate legislation. And this week, in a historic vote, the House is going to consider using that power to ban abortions based on gender. The bill is called the "Prenatal Anti-Discrimination Act," or PRENDA, because it...

In a surprise move, House Republicans announced this past Friday they would call for a vote on a federal ban against sex-selective abortion, aka the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, H.R. 3541*, tomorrow, May 30. PRENDA will be considered under “suspension of the rules,” meaning no amendments can be added. The bill must be voted on as is, straight up or down, and a two-thirds majority will be needed to pass it.

Planned Parenthood officials have responded to today’s expose’ video showing how a staffer at an Austin, Texas planned Parenthood clinic encouraged a woman inquiring about an abortion to determine the gender of her unborn child to have one. Planned Parenthood officials responded to the video in a statement to the liberal Huffington Post and admitted they will not deny women abortions for any reason, including sex-selection abortions. As the Post reports: This spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America also told The Huffington Post that the organization condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender, but its policy is to...

The blind Chinese human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who escaped from house arrest on April 22 and may be under the protection of the U.S. Embassy, was initially detained for exposing the massive abuse of Chinese women under China’s one-child policy. His documentation of forced sterilizations and abortions landed him in jail for four years, followed by a year and a half of house arrest. His daring escape has now triggered renewed attacks on organizations engaged in helping Chinese women keep and feed their infants. Since April 28, the Family Planning Commission of Susong County in China’s Anhui province has been...

In The Third World, Unwanted Baby Girls 'Disappear’. It’s Called Gendercide. And It’s Happening In This Country, Too Those who abort unwanted babies because of gender should feel the full force of the law. Prabha Sivaraman, who works for Pall Mall Medical in Manchester, filmed during a consultation with a pregnant woman By Allison Pearson 24 Feb 2012 In a children’s playground in Manhattan’s Central Park on a glorious, quickening spring Saturday, much like today, I was with my daughter by the climbing frame when a massed battalion of buggies came through the gates. The parents unleashed their precious cargo...

We have heard of the horrors imposed on the people of China—women who have been forced to have abortions due to China’s demented and barbaric “one-child policy.” Due to that sick mandate, enacted in the late 1970s, a disproportionately large male population has resulted, because Chinese parents have selectively aborted baby girls in the hopes of having a son instead. Back in 2004, China banned sex-selection abortions, and according to current legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, China is enforcing the ban. India and the United Kingdom have also banned sex and race-based abortions, and the United Nations...

THIS month brought news that could alter the landscape of American pregnancy. Tests using DNA to determine a fetus’s sex were shown to be remarkably accurate, able to tell with 95 percent certainty as early as seven weeks into pregnancy, if a woman is carrying a boy or girl. The tests, which detect the fetus’s DNA in a mother’s blood or urine, are available in drugstores and online, and reports about their accuracy are likely to increase their popularity. But the tests also raise ethical questions: whether couples will abort fetuses of an unwanted sex — as has happened in...

LiveScience is reporting a new Gallup Poll which finds: If they were only allowed to have one child, more Americans would prefer it be a boy rather than a girl, a new survey finds. Despite the intervening woman's movement, the results are very similar to those found when the same question was asked of Americans in 1941. The Gallup polling agency asked a random sample of 1,020 American adults whether they'd prefer to have a girl or a boy if they could only chose one. Forty percent said they'd pick a boy, 28 percent said they would want a girl,...

"Safe, legal, and rare," the moonbats bleat, reading off their bumper stickers. Yet this is where abortion leads: This couple are so desperate for a baby girl that they terminated twin boys and are fighting to choose the sex of their next child. The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to win the right to select sex by IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatment. … So determined are the couple to have a girl that they recently terminated twin boys conceived through...

The story of an Australian couple who aborted twin boys because they want to use IVF to ensure they have a daughter is attracting a lot of attention, especially among pro-lifers, and understandably so since the case seems to foreshadow an ethics-free future of eugenics.  But the couple, who want a girl to replace the infant daughter they recently lost, is so far still barred by Australian law from pursuing their quest for a female baby. The state of Victoria, where the unnamed couple lives, does not allow sex selection using IVF unless it is done to avoid the risk...

Couples in Australia having fertility treatment could soon be able to choose their babies' sex. Sex selection is only allowed in Australia when there is a risk that parents will pass on genetic diseases. The five-year moratorium on the practice expires this year and the National Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing whether to continue the general ban. But the Government is yet to be convinced it is the right move. Dr Sandra Hacker, chair of the council's Australian Health Ethics Committee, says the review will consider all sides of the controversial and emotive issue. She says previous consultations...

AUSTRALIAN couples may soon be able to choose the gender of their children for purely cultural reasons or just to balance their family. Australia's health watchdog is about to begin reviewing its ban on gender selection technology, with many fertility doctors lobbying for the controversial practice to become widely available. Professor Gab Kovacs - an IVF pioneer - is leading the charge, arguing that, at a cost of between $10,000 and $15,000, only the extremely determined would go for gender selection. "If I am prepared to pay for it out of my own pocket I can't understand why that should...

XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’ “Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the...

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, with sex-specific abortions a major factor. A study by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country's population of 1.3 billion. "Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas," where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were "complex". A researcher, Wang Guangzhou, said the skewed birth ratio could lead to difficulties for men with lower incomes...

January 11, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Chinese state media has admitted that the country’s One Child policy has resulted in a potentially disastrous demographic crisis. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that the policy that mandates abortion for many pregnancies, combined with sex-selection and a cultural preference for boys, has created a gender imbalance that will result in 24 million men who cannot find wives by 2020. The Academy study said that for every 100 girls born in China, 119 boys are born. In some areas, the split is 100 to 130. Gender selective abortions have become "extremely...

September 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - India's feminists and population control-pushing government are "stumped" by the dramatic drop of female births among the wealthier classes due to sex-selective abortions, reports the Globe and Mail's Indian correspondent Stephanie Nolen.Due to a 'son preference' in Indian culture, the use of new technologies to detect and abort baby girls has become widespread. Technically it has been illegal in India to tell couples the sex of their unborn child or to abort based on sex since 1994.  This law, however, is rarely enforced.  Consequently, sex-selective abortion practices are rampant and the ratio of girls to...

Chinese health officials reported Thursday that compared to 20 million births, more than 13 million abortions are performed each year in China. The number of abortions given does not include unreported procedures and medication-induced abortions, reported the state-run newspaper China Daily. According to Wu Shangchun, a research official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission, about 10 million abortion-inducing pills are sold in China each year. In terms of the rate of abortions, 13 million translates to about 24 abortions for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. By comparison, the abortion rate in the United...

The trend is buried deep in United States census data: seemingly minute deviations in the proportion of boys and girls born to Americans of Chinese, Indian and Korean descent. In those families, if the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy, according to recent studies of census data. If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male. Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but...