Shiv,
> On Thursday 14 Apr 2011 8:43:57 pm Jon Cox wrote:
> > Early detection of gender-linked chromosomal disorders
> > is a sound medical reason for prenatal gender determination.
...
> Imagine my amazement when I read the British figures and realised that
> maternal
> mortality in Britain was 1/10th that in India and the most frequent cause of
> maternal death in britain was anaestheic complications during Caesarean
> section. What India and Britain needed were two different things.
My point is not about what allocation of funds makes the
most sense for different countries. Obviously different
regions have distinct challenges & priorities.
I really want to hear what you have to say about my
central points. I think that criminalizing gender
determination:
[1] Fails to address the core social forces that
incline people to discriminate against girls.
in the first place. It's tackling the wrong
end of the problem, therefore the same resources
could be put to much better use elsewhere.
It's a dangerous and ineffective distraction.
[2] Criminalization carries with it many negative
unintended consequences for both woman and
infants (c.f.: the so-called "war on drugs").
[3] The law would be very easy to circumvent, and
therefore unlikely to be effective if the social
motivations remain the same. For example, in the
USA you can get home kits for $34 at Wallmart.
The results are available 10 minutes later.
Now, exactly how long do you think it will be until someone
in India starts making a cheap knockoff of a product like
that (or worse -- a totally bogus product)? If it really
is a black market product, how carefully do you think the
alpha/beta error rates will be monitored? Unfortunately,
the prospects are rather bleak.
> No one can argue that it is not important to look at the gender for certain
> reasons - but one has to get priorities right and for that we come face to
> face with a dilemma. Do we stop gender determination and save 10 million
> girls
> or do we allow gender determination and save 20,000 women from giving birth
> to
> children with genetic defects? (the figures are hyothetical but vaguely
> representative)
I think there's a big gap between what such a law would
hope to accomplish, and what it would really do.
That's the crux of it for me.
For the reasons listed above, I the actual choices
are more like this:
[y/n] Invest in the hard work of addressing core
social issues, education, and the promotion
of shifts in attitude on both a local and a
national level. Get to the root(s) of the problem.
[y/n] Attempt to suppress a black market in test kits
that can be made very cheaply, are small, easy
to use, and don't leave any detectable chemical
signature on the woman herself. On top of that,
try to do this in the face of strong demand
(after all, these are people who are willing
to kill their kid because it's a female).
[y/n] Criminalize what people are going to anyway
if their attitudes are the same, possibly
using test kits that are of low quality
or completely bogus? Optionally, run around
throwing people in jail, causing even more
poverty, misery, and secrecy on top of the
harm done to those who actually aren't out
to kill their child.
The bottom line is that I think we couldn't agree more
on the end goal of saving these girls, but we've got
some very different ideas about the likely outcome of
criminalizing prenatal gender testing kits.
In any event, time will tell.
Regards,
-Jon
