Sex Selective Abortion: Immediate Reaction

I've read a few opinion pieces already concerning this failure (it apparently needed a 2/3 majority to advance). The piece by Mr Ross Douthat is solid as usual. From his concluding paragraph:  "The underlying issue here, I suspect, is that the logic of the pro-choice cause makes it extremely difficult even for people who acknowledge that sex-selective abortion is a 'tragedy' to make the leap to the idea that it should be treated as a criminal offense."

The second post is by Mr Jeff Miller, citing Mr Thomas Peters. One oddity is that there are quite a few people who see nothing long with abortion, but who do see something wrong with sex-selective abortion; Madame Secretary of State is apparently one such person. I suppose that the argument could be made that this creates an unfortunate shortage of women in the world--and such an argument is sometimes made--but I'm not quite convinced that this is a feminist's argument, per se.

A high-resolution Ultrasound. Image Source.

What really stands out to me, though, is that in order for sex-selective abortion to be possible at all, there needs to be employed some technology which can determine (observationally) the child's sex before birth. And what would be this mystery technology? Ah, yes: the infamous sonogram whose mandatory use is especially vehemently opposed by Planned Parenthood when used to inform the parents of what their child looks like prior to an abortion. Bonus points for the fact that they would effectively be needing to use either a) a high-resolution sonogram or b) would need to describe at the very least the child's sex to the mother if she is not yet familiar enough with sonograms to pick out that detail herself.

I make two further observations from this:

1. In general, technology itself is neither inherently good nor inherently evil: though its application might be. A sonogram might be used to show a woman her child and thus change her mind against abortion, or it may be used to convince her to have an abortion (e.g. because she wants a boy and has a girl).
2. The abortion industry (and its lobbies and its subsidiaries in the government) are not really that concerned about the possible psychological impact of showing a woman a sonogram before she gets an abortion. Neither are they particularly concerned about the same with regards to offering her a description about the unborn child. It's only bad to do so if she is likely to change her mind and carry the child to term.