S.Amdt. 332

1. Adds SEC. 5__. SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING SEX-SELECTION ABORTIONS at the end of title V

   Adds a section

   In S.Con.Res. 8 · Placed on Calendar Senate

   When the Congressional Budget Office releases its annual update to the Budget and Economic Outlook, the Congressional Budget Office shall provide an analysis of the budgetary effects of 30 percent, 50 percent, and 100 percent of Americans losing employer sponsored health insurance and accessing coverage through Federal or State exchanges.

   Inserted: SEC. 5__. SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING SEX-SELECTION ABORTIONS.

   Inserted: (a) Findings.--The Senate finds the following:

   Inserted: (1) Women are a vital part of American society and culture and possess the same fundamental human rights and civil rights as men.

   Inserted: (2) United States law prohibits the dissimilar treatment of males and females who are similarly situated and prohibits sex discrimination in various contexts, including the provision of employment, education, housing, health insurance coverage, and athletics.

   Inserted: (3) Sex is an immutable characteristic ascertainable at the earliest stages of human development through existing medical technology and procedures commonly in use, including maternal-fetal bloodstream DNA sampling, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling or "CVS", and obstetric ultrasound. In addition to medically assisted sex determination, a growing sex determination niche industry has developed and is marketing low-cost commercial products, widely advertised and available, that aid in the sex determination of an unborn child without the aid of medical professionals. Experts have demonstrated that the sex-selection industry is on the rise and predict that it will continue to be a growing trend in the United States. Sex determination is always a necessary step to the procurement of a sex-selection abortion.

   Inserted: (4) A "sex-selection abortion" is an abortion undertaken for purposes of eliminating an unborn child based on the sex or gender of the child. Sex-selection abortion is barbaric, and described by scholars and civil rights advocates as an act of sex-based or gender-based violence, predicated on sex discrimination. Sex-selection abortions are typically late-term abortions performed in the 2nd or 3rd trimester of pregnancy, after the unborn child has developed sufficiently to feel pain. Substantial medical evidence proves that an unborn child can experience pain at 20 weeks after conception, and perhaps substantially earlier. By definition, sex-selection abortions do not implicate the health of the mother of the unborn, but instead are elective procedures motivated by sex or gender bias.

   Inserted: (5) The targeted victims of sex-selection abortions performed in the United States and worldwide are overwhelmingly female. The selective abortion of females is female infanticide, the intentional killing of unborn females, due to the preference for male offspring or "son preference". Son preference is reinforced by the low value associated, by some segments of the world community, with female offspring. Those segments tend to regard female offspring as financial burdens to a family over their lifetime due to their perceived inability to earn or provide financially for the family unit as can a male. In addition, due to social and legal convention, female offspring are less likely to carry on the family name. "Son preference" is one of the most evident manifestations of sex or gender discrimination in any society, undermining female equality, and fueling the elimination of females' right to exist in instances of sex-selection abortion.

   Inserted: (6) Sex-selection abortions are not expressly prohibited by United States law or the laws of 47 States. Sex-selection abortions are performed in the United States. In a March 2008 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Columbia University economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund examined the sex ratio of United States-born children and found "evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage". The data revealed obvious "son preference" in the form of unnatural sex-ratio imbalances within certain segments of the United States population, primarily those segments tracing their ethnic or cultural origins to countries where sex-selection abortion is prevalent. The evidence strongly suggests that some Americans are exercising sex-selection abortion practices within the United States consistent with discriminatory practices common to their country of origin, or the country to which they trace their ancestry. While sex-selection abortions are more common outside the United States, the evidence reveals that female feticide is also occurring in the United States.

   Inserted: (7) The American public supports a prohibition of sex-selection abortion. In a March 2006 Zogby International poll, 86 percent of Americans agreed that sex-selection abortion should be illegal, yet only 3 States proscribe sex-selection abortion.

   Inserted: (8) Despite the failure of the United States to proscribe sex-selection abortion, the United States Congress has expressed repeatedly, through Congressional resolution, strong condemnation of policies promoting sex-selection abortion in the "Communist Government of China". Likewise, at the 2007 United Nation's Annual Meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, 51st Session, the United States delegation spearheaded a resolution calling on countries to condemn sex-selective abortion, a policy directly contradictory to the permissiveness of current United States law, which places no restriction on the practice of sex-selection abortion. The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has urged governments of all nations "to take necessary measures to prevent . . . prenatal sex selection".

   Inserted: (9) A 1990 report by Harvard University economist Amartya Sen, estimated that more than 100 million women were "demographically missing" from the world as early as 1990 due to sexist practices, including sex-selection abortion. Many experts believe sex-selection abortion is the primary cause. Current estimates of women missing from the world range in the hundreds of millions.

   Inserted: (10) Countries with longstanding experience with sex-selection abortion such as the Republic of India, the United Kingdom, and the People's Republic of China, have enacted restrictions on sex-selection, and have steadily continued to strengthen prohibitions and penalties. The United States, by contrast, has no law in place to restrict sex-selection abortion, establishing the United States as affording less protection from sex-based feticide than the Republic of India or the People's Republic of China, whose recent practices of sex-selection abortion were vehemently and repeatedly condemned by United States congressional resolutions and by the United States Ambassador to the Commission on the Status of Women. Public statements from within the medical community reveal that citizens of other countries come to the United States for sex-selection procedures that would be criminal in their country of origin. Because the United States permits abortion on the basis of sex, the United States may effectively function as a "safe haven" for those who seek to have American physicians do what would otherwise be criminal in their home countries--a sex-selection abortion, most likely late-term.

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   Inserted: (11) The American medical community opposes sex-selection. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, commonly known as "ACOG", stated in its 2007 Ethics Committee Opinion, Number 360, that sex-selection is inappropriate because it "ultimately supports sexist practices". The American Society of Reproductive Medicine (commonly known as "ASRM") 2004 Ethics Committee Opinion on sex-selection notes that central to the controversy of sex-selection is the potential for "inherent gender discrimination, . . . the risk of psychological harm to sex-selected offspring (i.e., by placing on them expectations that are too high), . . . and reinforcement of gender bias in society as a whole". Embryo sex-selection, ASRM notes, remains "vulnerable to the judgment that no matter what its basis, [the method] identifies gender as a reason to value one person over another, and it supports socially constructed stereotypes of what gender means". In doing so, it not only "reinforces possibilities of unfair discrimination, but may trivialize human reproduction by making it depend on the selection of nonessential features of offspring". The ASRM ethics opinion continues, "ongoing problems with the status of women in the United States make it necessary to take account of concerns for the impact of sex-selection on goals of gender equality". The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an organization with hundreds of members--many of whom are former abortionists--makes the following declaration: "Sex selection abortions are more graphic examples of the damage that abortion inflicts on women. In addition to increasing premature labor in subsequent pregnancies, increasing suicide and major depression, and increasing the risk of breast cancer in teens who abort their first pregnancy and delay childbearing, sex selection abortions are often targeted at fetuses simply because the fetus is female. As physicians who care for both the mother and her unborn child, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists vigorously opposes aborting fetuses because of their gender.". The President's Council on Bioethics published a Working Paper stating the council's belief that society's respect for reproductive freedom does not prohibit the regulation or prohibition of "sex control", defined as the use of various medical technologies to choose the sex of one's child. The publication expresses concern that "sex control might lead to . . . dehumanization and a new eugenics".

   Inserted: (12) Sex-selection abortion results in an unnatural sex-ratio imbalance. An unnatural sex-ratio imbalance is undesirable, due to the inability of the numerically predominant sex to find mates. Experts worldwide document that a significant sex-ratio imbalance in which males numerically predominate can be a cause of increased violence and militancy within a society. Likewise, an unnatural sex-ratio imbalance gives rise to the commoditization of humans in the form of human trafficking, and a consequent increase in kidnapping and other violent crime.

   Inserted: (13) Sex-selection abortions have the effect of diminishing the representation of women in the American population, and therefore, the American electorate.

   Inserted: (14) Sex-selection abortion reinforces sex discrimination and has no place in a civilized society.

   Inserted: (15) The history of the United States includes examples of sex discrimination. The people of the United States ultimately responded in the strongest possible legal terms by enacting a constitutional amendment correcting elements of such discrimination. Women, once subjected to sex discrimination that denied them the right to vote, now have suffrage guaranteed by the 19th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The elimination of discriminatory practices has been and is among the highest priorities and greatest achievements of American history.

   Inserted: (16) Implicitly approving the discriminatory practice of sex-selection abortion by choosing not to prohibit them will reinforce these inherently discriminatory practices, and evidence a failure to protect a segment of certain unborn americans because those unborn are of a sex that is disfavored. Sex-selection abortions trivialize the value of the unborn on the basis of sex, reinforcing sex discrimination, and coarsening society to the humanity of all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life. Thus, Congress has a compelling interest in acting--indeed it must act--to prohibit sex-selection abortion.

   Inserted: (b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that--

   Inserted: (1) Congress has power to prohibit sex selection abortions under the Commerce Clause; section 5 of the 14th amendment, including the power to enforce the prohibition on Government action denying equal protection of the laws; and section 8 of article I; and

   Inserted: (2) Congress should enact S. 138, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), to amend chapter 13 of title 18, United States Code, to provide that whoever knowingly performs an abortion knowing that such abortion is sought based on the sex or gender of the child; uses force or the threat of force to intentionally injure or intimidate any person for the purpose of coercing a sex-selection abortion; solicits or accepts funds for the performance of a sex-selection abortion; or transports a woman into the United States or across a State line for the purpose of obtaining a sex-selection abortion; or who attempts to do any of these things, may be fine or imprisoned up to five years under this title; and to allow for civil action by a woman on whom such an abortion was performed; provided, however, that nothing in such Act shall be construed to require that a healthcare provider has an affirmative duty to inquire as to the motivation for the abortion, absent the healthcare provider having knowledge or information that the abortion is being sought based on the sex or gender of the child.

   Original wording

   At the end of title V, add the following:

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As printed