ר Update: Eugenic Abortions and Homosexuality. A previous post reported the case in England of late-term abortion because the baby had a cleft palate. Most often, the reason for therapeutic abortions is probably that the baby is a girl (that is how I interpret the growing imbalance in the sexes in Asia), or, in America, that the baby has Down's Syndrome and would have done poorly in school. My Friend the Battery Man has a brilliant thought on how a different kind of eugenic abortion will cause a crisis in the courts in a few years:

... I may have described to you before my thoughts on a future crisis for the great Progressive Coalition. Someone will identify a gay gene (as they must, for political reasons). Someone else will find a way to test for this gay gene in utero. And then the abortion of gay fetuses will have to be banned, except that abortion must not be restricted ever in any way. Crisis! I suppose what will happen is that the use of the in utero test will be banned, preferably by the courts, on the grounds of some previously undiscovered right implicit in the Constitution.

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