Interesting survey work here that drills into when people feel abortion should, or should not, be legal. It finds that absolutists (it should always be [not] legal) soften when asked about particular circumstances — e.g., rape, the threatened death of the mother, or using abortion to control for the gender of a child. There tends to be a lot more common feeling between the left and the right when those are the frames for the discussion, not broad statements of principle.
I think this distinction is part of what makes the much broader brush strokes from the politicians so dicey. It's a lot easier to stand on a general principle ("right to life" / "freedom of choice") than to answer questions that drill down to particulars. That's when the pols start getting in trouble or sounding like inhuman monsters if they try to maintain an abstract view, rather than address more real-world instances.
The problem is, those real world instances don't lend themselves to a very good rubric of right and wrong. "Abortion should be legal as long as it's being done for a reason that most people agree with" is not a very good or sustainable public policy. That's in part why I tend to be very liberal about abortion rights, because I try to distinguish between what I find objectionable and what I think should be illegal, and the very process of defining under what circumstances abortion should be legal is, itself, problematic.
So, no, I don't think abortion should be used for sex selection, but (a) I'm not sure I can articulate why without vague gestures, and (b) does my "don't think should be" objection rise to the level of legal injunction? People have (or don't have) babies all the time for reasons I find problematic; when should I get to have my say-so in that with the law backing me up? And why should I?
Candidates Fight Over Abortion, but Public Has Surprising Level of Harmony – NYTimes.com
If you ask them specifics, Americans are often in accord about when and why abortions should be legal.
We definitely need to change the dialogue to get less black and white on this issue. When you look at the number of people who are willing to have an abortion even though they had been against it, when they are faced with circumstances warranting one. It's clear that when we get personal, we can agree much more.
You can actually make the argument against sex selection without even referring to abortion. China and India are facing major social disruption as a result of sex selection. From a social perspective alone it's a bad idea.
I think we can productively change the dialogue on a lot of issues because people who think they disagree when its boiled down to a sound bite don't actually disagree that much when you get into the specifics. On a whole range of things.
There's this unfortunate tendency in our political dialogue to create these extremist stalking horses and call that the position of your opposition. So pro choice has to mean abortions on demand for everybody handed out like confetti, and anti abortion of course has to mean no abortion for anyone regardless of why or what the medical concerns may be. Polarize the issue and then cast asparagus at the opposition. Works as a strategy for getting people to give you money and march behind you but its a crap strategy for actually solving problems.
I think its a hold over from a time when we didn't have the technology to discuss complex issues in any kind of detail in the political arena. So the way the system worked was that people got elected by shouting slogans at mass meetings and demonizing their opponents. Once elected then they put their heads together behind closed doors with their opponents and actually got into the nuance and specifics and compromised. But since there wasn't a 24 hour news cycle telling their constituents what they were doing behind the closed doors, they weren't held to the slogans they shouted in public. Now they are.
+Donna Buckles Well, there are folk who insist that abortion should be banned, without exception. And there are some folk (fewer and fringier, from my perception) who proclaim that abortion is a perfectly legit and harmless form of birth control. Those are the folk who tend to get the press, and, yes, they become the exemplars for "Those Fanatics Over There" in a way that drives donations and fear.
Yeah, using the fringe as exemplars is a bad way to create policy, although a fine way to drive donations and fear. Used to be it was possible to do both, claim that the opposition were all fanatics and then quietly work with them anyway but in the glass houses of the modern world, I'm not sure it is possible any more.