Matthew Yglesias points out that contrary to the assertions of anti-abortion conservatives, sex-selective abortion is really mostly about sex discrimination politics (which conservatives like Ross Douthat are completely and unabashedly in favor of) and not very much about abortion at all.

Here's his thoroughly unescapable pitch:

This seems like an issue we can shed some light on with a not-very-outlandish thought experiment. According to both secular liberals and religious conservatives, a human spermatozoon is not a moral person entitled to our protection. To kill one is perfectly acceptable. And yet male fetuses and female fetuses (and ultimately male children and female children) are distinguished from each other according to whether or not their spermatozoon “father” carries an X chromosome or a Y chromosome. In principle, it’s not difficult to imagine scientists developing some kind of medication that a man could take that would specifically target one or the other kind. Take the “girl” pill and you become incapable of fathering male children. Take the “boy” pill and you become incapable of fathering female children.

On joint Douthatian and Yglesian principles, nobody’s being killed here. But I think that if we found out that use of the “boy” pill was extremely widespread, this might still legitimately worry us for three kinds of reasons. One is that widespread use of the boy pill would express the inegalitarian idea that men are more valuable than women. A second is that widespread use of the boy pill would reflect the existence of ongoing inequities in society that make it the case that a male child is more valuable than a female child. The third is that there are plausible reasons to believe that even a relatively small gender gap in the population could have problematic macro-scale consequences for society.

As it happens, sex-selective medical intervention overwhelmingly takes the form of abortions. But there are plenty of reasons you might be concerned about the phenomenon that don’t have to do with abortion specifically.

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Yup. Eliminate sex-selective abortion in much of the world and all you'll see is more people returning to their long-established sex-discriminating traditions of murdering infant daughters and "trying" again. Continue the status quo and you'll continue to see sex discrimination in the form of sex-selective abortions. Progressives will be queasy, and conservatives will obviously object that it's still abortion. Introduce sex-selecting contraception and all you do is create entirely humane and non-murderous sex discrimination. Progressives will remain queasy but conservatives will just gin up some other reason to concern-troll about abortion.

Obviously it will still be sex discrimination.

And so obviously the answer to sex-selection abortion is to work on the religious, traditional, and of course economic conditions that drive social discrimination against women, and thus family discrimination against girl children, in the first place.

Photo by quail by Flickr user outdoorPDK. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast lays out the way South Dakota has (almost certainly) outlawed all abortions by a) mandating by law that every woman seeking an abortion must get pre-abortion counseling from an avowedly anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy" clinic knowing full well that b) every "crisis pregnancy" clinic in the state will refuse to provide such counseling.

Then she asks the $64,000 question (emphasis mine)

There you have it. Amanda Marcotte lays out the rest of the scheme, but while the Devil was in the details on the way to an on-the-ground ban nothing but large-scale action will undo it. Have you heard this on the news or read it in the paper? No? Color me unsurprised. Have you heard Democrats speaking about this? No? Despite the fact that the majority of Democratic Party supporters are women, you won't hear a peep.

The forced-birth people have claimed a significant victory here. Where are the Democrats?

Source: Brilliant at Breakfast

Now as it happens the majority of Democrats are women and you're not really hearing about it from them either.  And it's likely that there are some kinds of strategic reasons for this: at least on the legal front avowedly pro-choice legal groups were saying as recently as yesterday that they're going to pick their court cases extremely carefully before taking them to the Republican-majority women-sacrificers in the Supreme Court.

But still, would it really kill the Democrats, men or women, to open their mouths about this?  Even if it's just to express their opinions?  Even just once?

Robin Marty produces yet another demonstration of the complete lack of seriousness of the "pro-life" movement.  (Emphasis mine.)

I've read enough anti-choice literature now to know that if you are against abortion, at the moment of conception you now have a separate and unique individual.  That's how personhood works, and those are the words that doctors are expected to recite to you if you want to obtain an abortion in certain states.

But that only counts inside the clinic.  On the sidewalk, it's a different story, one clinic escort shares:

"Yesterday, the clinic had to call the police (again) because the protesters had (again) violated the terms of the injunction. There were four women on the sidewalk and together they had three kids in strollers. In my world, four plus three equals seven. When told they were violating the injunction, they argued that "four people" did not include children."

Source: RHRealityCheck.org

Oh, and speaking of failures to take "life begins at conception" seriously, I still haven't heard back from the smug "fetal harm" vigilanties and "fetal death" execution proponents about whether their draconian penalties intended to terrorize abortion providers would apply to those who harm fetuses via dispersal of pollutants, pesticides, or manufactured products that cause fetal defects and/or death.

I wasn't holding my breath, of course, because their opposition to abortion has nothing at all to do with concern either for fetuses or (as in the case of the clinic demonstrators who don't even see their own, born children ad people) considerations of personhood.

This is actually perfectly consistent once you get that their opposition to abortion is all about confining and controlling women: Since children are literally the "wages of sin" for that crowd, and since abortion in their eyes is a way for women to avoid their just deserts, thinking of their own children as people instead of punishment isn't really part of their frames of reference.

The mistake, I think, is believing them when they say they're "pro-life."  Their utter disregard for born children as human beings is one example.  A more telling one is their complete and utter indifference to miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, and so on, which generally only "stops a beating heart" of wanted children.

Photo via Sociological Images.

So when I saw the billboard model anti-choicers picked for their “most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb” anti-abortion campaign -- a late-elementary school girl in a light top with a wary, kind of stunned look on her face -- it really bothered me but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  She seems pretty old for their usual cutesy baby poster-child pics.

Amanda Marcotte gave me the clue I was looking for.

Sean Hannity, yelling at Juan Williams for suggesting it’s a good thing if women can choose when they give birth: “I’m pro-choice in this sense, Juan.  If you choose to get in the back of the car with someone, if you choose to make out with them, if you choose to grab, grope and fondle, if you choose to take one article of clothing off after another, guess what? You made a series of choices, Juan.”

What I enjoyed was the realization that Hannity thinks people stop fucking when they get old enough to have apartments of their own, and don’t have to make out in the back seats of cars.  Is this a widespread assumption on the right?

Source: Pandagon

I thinks she's exactly right.  Adult women pretty much don’t have sex in cars.  For one thing, last I checked you pretty much can’t have sex in a car.  Unless it’s sex in a mini-van (not that uncommon but not what Hannity is imagining) or... sex in back of the kind of large “pimp-mobile” American sedans I suspect he is imagining.

That’s what Hannity thinks abortion is all about: teen pregnancy.  Early teen pregnancy.  At the hands, no doubt, of “big black studs” driving around in welfare Cadillacs.  Who thanks to Planned Parenthood's enabling are able to, like, totally get away without paying "the wages of sin."

This African American pimp/teen-whore stereotype is a total fixation for ‘wingers.  It’s no coincidence that Lila Rose got actors to pretend to be pimps for her failed video sting of Planned Parenthood.  Same, of course, with James O’Keefe’s sting against ACORN.  (Even when they used white actors, as when O'Keefe himself pretended to be a pimp, their attire and demeanor was straight out of 1970s-style urban-black exploitation iconography.)

I’d just add that the right almost has to demonize stereotypes of very young African American girls and older, underworld partners because the alternative is confronting the majority of women who actually do get abortions.  Because the reaction when a lower-middle-class working or college-bound woman in her late teens or early 20s gets an abortion, or a married woman who doesn’t want any more kids gets an abortion, or an even older married woman who's amniocentesis or ultrasound reveals profound disabilities the reaction is a lot less, um, viscerally satisfying.  Instead, when it comes to their own daughters, friends, sisters, mothers, and wives it tends to be almost... sympathetic.

Don't get me wrong.  They could debate the issue on its actual merits.  Hard to imagine it ever occurring to them.