Sitting in an office here in my great-uncle’s daughter’s husband’s psychiatry clinic in Remuera, scoring some free time on the world wide web…
My latest post on JillStanek.com is regarding the IntelliGender test kit which is apparently coming on sale here in New Zealand as soon as 22 June. Below is an excerpt from the article…
The real concern with the introduction of this product is that it will increase the overall number of abortions performed in New Zealand. With her pregnancy at 8 weeks, a woman may not have yet bonded with her unborn child. The level of commitment that she feels to her child is likely to be considerably less than it will be when the child is at 18 weeks. The majority of women appear to accept that the later a pregnancy is, the more undesirable it is to have an abortion. The IntelliGender offers to remove this cause for hesitation by allowing women to learn the sex of their child much earlier on in the pregnancy.
Voice for Life spokesperson Bernard Moran got to the heart of the matter when he said commented that certain ethnic minorities might be more prone to use the test to determine whether or not the pregnancy should be allowed to go ahead. On a pragmatic level, you just need to look at the situation in China if you are unsure about the impact of sex-selection abortions on a country. God has put a system in place that keeps gender number disparity to a minimum, however when we try and do it our way, we’re bound to screw it up.
IntelliGender are intentionally refraining from even touching on the darker ramifications of the use of their product. Instead they market the kit as “a fun, affordable and safe way to determine pink or blue!” While there is nothing wrong with the product in and of itself, the potential for misuse outweighs the benefit. New Zealand will be the worse off for allowing the IntelliGender kit to go on sale.
The purpose of this post is to reconcile my call for this product to be banned, with my libertarian convictions, which I believe will make for an interesting discussion. There is a principle that holds that it is not weapons that kill people. Rather, it is the people wielding the weapons are the perpetrators. Again, it is not the bomb-making instructions that are guilty in a terrorist attack, but the terrorist himself. Ultimately, it is not the means of a crime that are guilty or the thing that enables a crime to take place, but the person who uses these means or makes use of the enabler, to carry out their crime.
On this basis, libertarians state that guns, knives, bomb-making instructions or kits should not be legislated against. Neither should writings expressing hatred or inciting violence against a minority or ethnic group be outlawed. There is potential for crimes to be committed through use of these things, however the crimes have already been specified in the law and legislated against. There is a penalty which has been specified for crimes such as homocide and rape, and as such the perpetrators can be legally disciplined.
In the case of abortion however, New Zealand’s law is being interpreted in a way that treats the abortion of an unborn child not as a crime, but as a woman’s right. This means that there is no legal retribution for a perpetrator of the immoral act of abortion. Since New Zealand’s judiciary does not provide protection for the unborn child, an exception must be made to the principle outlined above. The IntelliGender test kit enables women to make an abortion decision based on the sex of her unborn child, and is therefore an abortion enabler. While abortion is still legal in New Zealand, this kit must not be allowed to go on sale since there is no system in place to prevent the abuse of the product.
Interesting post. Any sex-selection has dangerous implications for a country. The normal sex ratio is 105 males are born for every 100 females, which eventually balances around the age of 30. Any variant of this will have severe consequences in either direction.
I'm sorry, I don't happen to share your libertarian views (at least, I haven't since about 1998). I believe we make far too much of 'freedom' viewed as permissiveness, when it is some of our freedoms that we are using to destroy ourselves, each other and the planet.
I think there's a clear and unambiguous case for banning these, as there always has been for RU-486 and other abortion enablers. Just like there is for oversized SUVs, violence on TV, 'adult' websites, spam, or nuclear weapons.