Here’s an article from the BBC about abortion. Indian culture prizes boys more than girls, and with expensive dowries to pay Indian couples regard too many baby girls as a disadvantage. With pre natal scanning they are choosing to abort their daughters—simply because they are female.

What is interesting about this report is that the BBC (quite rightly) want to portray this as a crime. So they have coined a new word with negative connotations: it is ‘female foeticide’. But of course, any abortion–male or female–is foeticide, so why don’t they use this new word for all their discussions of abortion?

Can’t any of these folks see the double standard? “Abortion” is a women’s right to choose, while “female foeticide” is wrong? Surely, according to the prevailing pro choice arguments an Indian woman has the right to choose ‘foeticide’ if she wishes? Isn’t it just that liberal Western feminists want to choose ‘foeticide’ for their own set of reasons, while denying Indian women the right to choose ‘foeticide’ simply because they regard the Indian womens’ reasons to be somehow more barbaric?

In fact, for any mother anywhere to choose to kill her unborn child is barbaric. It is just as cruel and barbaric to kill a female feotus in New Delhi for social reasons as it is for a woman in New York to kill her foetus for social reasons. One woman kills a baby because she would prefer a boy and because the girl will demand an expensive dowry. The other kills the baby because it will be detrimental to her figure, her career or her love life.

At least the BBC have come far enough to regard abortion as foeticide. They should now be consistent and demand its abolition everwhere–not just for Indian women.