AP

On 22 October 2025 the Libertarian Member of the NSW Legislative Council, John Ruddick, introduced a private members bill which is designed to outlaw sex-selective abortion, and even punish it with five years’ imprisonment.

This has been a concern for a number of years. In 2007 at the United Nations a resolution was brought forward to condemn sex-selection abortion on the ground that it discriminated against women, but many feminist organisations opposed it because they feared the implications for all abortions.

In China and India where ultrasounds have detected females in the womb, this has led to more abortions. One Chinese dissident, Chi An, tells of rampant female infanticide, living babies being thrown out with the rubbish, and babies about to be born being injected with formaldehyde.[1] Both countries have witnessed female infanticide on a momentous scale, and China had a compulsory one-child policy which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of female infants, whether born or unborn.[2] So terrible were the effects of this policy in China that in 2016 authorities adopted a two-child policy, and in 2021 tried to encourage a three-child policy

The situation in Australia is both interesting and appalling. A keen defender of the right to kill the unborn and an ardent feminist, Leslie Cannold nevertheless objects to abortion on the grounds of sex selection – which usually means the death of the female child.[3] She sees sex selection abortion as an assault on women.

Janet Hadley also protests: ‘A society which tolerates female infanticide or abortion of female fetuses holds women in contempt, whatever status women may achieve as mothers of sons.’ Yet she fears that banning sex-selection abortions will drive a wedge into other abortion laws.[4]

Dr Amanuel Gebremedhin of Edith Cowan University reported in June 2025 that Indian and Chinese families living in Australia revealed a skewed sex ratio at birth, especially if the family already had a daughter or two. He called for the inevitable ‘discussion’ on this, but finished lamely: ‘While maintaining rights of bodily autonomy, sex-selective abortion should be discouraged, as it undermines broader commitments to gender equality and non-discrimination.’[5]

Before coming to the main point, we ought to note that it is not all one-way traffic. In 2011 in Victoria a couple terminated twin boys conceived through IVF because they wanted a girl.[6]

But the main point regarding sex selection abortion is not that is unpleasant because it discriminates but that it is sinful because it is the killing of the innocent. Given Australia’s capitulation to abortion up to birth (and even after), it is difficult to see how banning will achieve much in terms of lives saved. Those wanting to rid themselves of an unborn child can give any reason they want.

Abortion is wrong for both sexes. Mr Ruddick’s bill should cause a fluster in the hen house. And that is welcome, but it is only a wedge to press further.

– Peter Barnes

[1] see Steve Mosher, A Mother’s Ordeal: The Story of Chi An, One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy, (United States: Little, Brown and Company, 1994).

[2] In January 2006 an article in the British medical journal The Lancet suggested that selective abortion had led to the deaths of up to 10 million baby girls in 20 years, despite the fact that the practice of gender selective abortion has been illegal since 1994; see S. Sheth, ‘Missing female births in India’, in The Lancet, vol. 367, issue 9506, pp.185-186.

[3] L. Cannold, The Abortion Myth, (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998p.128.

[4] J. Hadley, Abortion: Between Freedom and Necessity (London: Virago Press, 1996), p.100.

[5] ECU Newsroom, 30 June 2025.

[6] Herald Sun ‘Couple aborts twin boys for girl’, 8 January 2011.