No Worse, Indeed

Everyone active in the pro-life movement knows that infanticide has been going on for decades, and for exactly the reason now openly given: between late pregnancy and the neonatal stage, the child has merely changed address.

The same is true of sex-selective abortion (and infanticide), perfectly legal if a note can be produced saying that having a child of the "wrong" sex would drive the mother round the bend, or would lay her open to physical punishment by her husband or another relative, a claim for which nothing so vulgar as evidence is expected to be produced, any more than anything so vulgar as evidence was expected to be produced by the pioneers of the anti-natal movement when they made, as their successors still make, outlandish claims about the drunkenness and violence of working-class men.

And the same is true of race-selective abortion (and infanticide), perfectly legal if a note can be produced saying that having a child of the "wrong" colour or ethnic, such as caste, background would drive the mother round the bend, or would lay her open to physical punishment by her father or another relative, a claim for which nothing so vulgar as evidence is expected to be produced, any more than anything so vulgar as evidence was expected to be produced by the pioneers of the anti-natal movement when they made, as their successors still make, outlandish claims about the drunkenness and violence of working-class men.

First sex selection has been exposed after all these years. Now infanticide has been, too. With any luck, if that is the right way of putting it, ethnic selection will be next. Better late than never, I suppose. But, in all three cases, very, very, very late indeed.