‘Pro-choice’ and sex-selective abortions

The pro-abortion argument often boils down to one simple line: “my body, my choice”. A woman’s authority over what she (mis)understands to be her body is what every debate comes back to. Stated triumphantly, it’s believed to be a slam-dunk, end of story finisher to any argument on the topic of abortion. 

Things get a little awkward for abortion supporters and campaigners, however, when the topic of sex-selective abortion comes up. 

Sex-selective abortions are not a novel phenomenon in countries such as China and India, but in Central Asia, an overwhelming pressure felt by women from family and society to produce sons is leading to sex-selective abortions and the deaths of thousands of girls in the womb. 

A recent story from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on Guli, a 35-year-old woman from Uzbekistan, whose husband’s family openly demanded a son during each of her pregnancies. She gave birth to girl after girl, and when doctors revealed her fourth pregnancy was also a girl, relatives pushed her to have an abortion. Thankfully, she refused. However, the pressure escalated after her fourth daughter was born. In what can be interpreted as an attempt to appease her husband, Guli encouraged her husband to take a second wife, hoping he would finally have a son through her. Nevertheless, this wife too gave birth to only daughters, four of them, leaving the man with a total of eight daughters. “Stories like theirs are repeated across the region”, writes RFE/RL. 

Despite the law in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan permitting abortion up to 12 weeks, with abortions after this gestational point only allowed in cases of “medical or social reasons”, activists and psychologists say this is often ignored. 

Muazzam Ibrakhimova, a psychologist based in Fergana in eastern Uzbekistan, said she knew of “cases where women were forced to terminate pregnancies even at 21 weeks simply because they were expecting a girl”.

It is estimated by the United Nations (UN) that a staggering 142 million girls are missing from the population globally because of this sort of cultural preference for male over female children. The UN has gone so far as to urge governments in relevant countries to ban the technologies used in the process of sex-selection by parents, condemning these “practices” as “one of the most direct and blatant forms of sex-based violence and discrimination, beginning at the earliest stages of life”. 

There exists, of course, a massive contradiction in the UN’s position. As Live Action states in their article on sex-selective abortions in Central Asia, “the UN also states that “denial of access to abortion has been identified as a form of gender-based violence against women, which can amount to torture and/or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment.”

So, which is it? 

Abortion-advocates would likely jump at the opportunity to point out that so far, the conversation has been about sex-selective abortions where the mother felt pressured or forced. Which they would speak out against. But that is not the circumstances surrounding every single one of the 142 million aborted girls. What about when the mother wants the abortion too? As the UN states in its 2025 report, “Prenatal sex-selective practices, including sex-selective abortions, are a major form of sex-based violence. Sex-selective practices encompass “all the practices that involve the direct or indirect elimination of girl children because they are female”. This practice, which is thoroughly condemned by the UN, is not limited to cases where the mother is forced or pressured into the abortion. It includes abortions where mothers, too, wanted to end the lives of their “girl children” -- to use the UN’s own description. 

The UN claims in its report that aborting a baby because she is female represents “one of the most direct and blatant forms of sex-based violence and discrimination, beginning at the earliest stages of life”. Quite right. But what’s the issue when the mother decides it’s what she wants? Shouldn’t we trust women? Are we not teetering dangerously close to interfering with a woman’s right to choose? Aren’t her motives, when they are truly hers, irrelevant? What happened to “my body, my choice”? 

As so often happens with the abortion debate, a road-block appears. One cannot progress past this point without accepting the facts and logical consequences of their position. When somebody calls themselves “pro-choice”, they need to be prepared to support the choice of abortion in any and all circumstances. Because, as they so heavily emphasise themselves, a woman’s “right to choose” is the foundational principle of the reproductive rights movement. Nothing should interfere with a woman’s so-called “bodily autonomy” - even the inhumanity of having your unborn child killed in the womb because of their gender.