The fight for “choice” truly knows no bounds. In the Guardian on Thursday morning, freelance writer Sarah Ditum asked, “What’s the difference with sex selection?” Her answer: “As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter why any woman wants to end her pregnancy.”

Britain has been embroiled in a debate about sex-selective abortions of late after the Crown Prosecution Service refused to enforce the law banning such practices, saying they didn’t believe it would be in the “public interest.” Doctors who agree to arrange abortions based on sex alone will face no criminal charges, even though the 1967 Abortion Act is traditionally interpreted as banning the practice and U.K. ministers have repeatedly condemned such acts as “morally wrong.”


Such moral scruples amount to “rank brutality,” in the words of Ditum. “As the conscious and legally competent entity in the conception set-up, it’s the woman’s say that counts, and even the most terrible reason for having an abortion holds more sway than the best imaginable reason for compelling a woman to carry to term,” she says.

At least Ms. Ditum can be praised for her consistency. Unlike many pro-choice advocates, Ditum understands that when a fetus is declared decidedly un-human, questions of sex, just like questions of eye color, race, potential mental disabilities and all other human qualities, cease to matter. “It doesn’t matter what’s growing inside you is liable to end up as a man or a woman,” Ditum says. “What matters is whether the person it’s growing inside—the person who is going to have to deliver the resulting baby, at not inconsiderable personal peril—actually wants to be pregnant and give birth to this child.”

Ditum argues gendercide might actually be laudable. “What about when a pregnant woman lives in a society that gives her real and considerable reason to fear having a girl? . . . In those situations, a woman wouldn’t just be justified in seeking sex selective abortion; she’d be thoroughly rational in doing so,” she writes. Ditum doesn’t mention how societies where women are afraid to have female children will be served by protecting their right to kill babies of a certain gender.