Laws Prohibiting Sex-Selective Abortion in the United States

As part of the anti-abortion movement's legislative campaign, seven states have passed bans on sex-selective abortion and many more are pending, including in Congress. Advocates of the bans argue that they are needed to prevent widespread elimination of female fetuses by Asians in the United States. They argue that the United States is contributing to the global pandemic of "missing women" and that sex-selective abortion must be banned to promote women's equality. Opponents of these bills point out that they are a "wolf in sheep's clothes" couched in the language of women's equality, but restricting women's autonomy and unfairly stigmatizing minorities. Students in the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School have been working with economists and the National Asian Pacific Women's Forum to draft a report that will bring empirical data to bear on these policy debates. This panel was recorded on April 24, 2014 and was sponsored by: International Human Rights Clinic, Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ), Asian Pacific Law Students Association (APALSA), and South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA). Panelists included Sital Kalantry (UChicago Law), Sujatha Jesudason (University of California, San Francisco), Arindam Nandi (Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy), Alexander Persaud (University of Michigan), Kelsey Stricker (3L), Miriam Yeung (NAPAWF), and Brian Citro (UChicago Law).