"I think that it is wrong and should be declared illegal. Many feminists would no doubt agree, others are less commital."

Nice random bashing of feminists there. You're so goddam random that it's pointless to have a discussion with you, as you'll just go off on another tangent.

"Putin put aside the personal attacks and deal with the issues."

Doctor, heal thyself.

"OK so we have established that sex selection abortion does indeed occur in the USA. "

On a small scale within a small subset of the population. Obviously enough to blow it up and pretend like it's rampant. Or engage in ridiculous conspiracy theories impugning the integrity of the entire medical profession.

"Or is this to be extended to rape, incest, wife beating etc.......I would have thought this to be obvious, but there you are."

So your answer is the slippery slope fallacy? Because obvious desperate young girls who will be kicked out of school if they're pregnant are equivalent to "wife beaters".
Way to compare apples to oranges, there.

"An example of an unbiased sorce used by Putin."

I provided a reuters link that corroborated the problem. You seriously post garbage from anti-abortion blogs every 4 seconds, yet harp on a guardian post that cited a well-sourced Reproductive Rights Center report.

Or other times, you'll post stuff from an anti-abortion blog, but claim it's actually from a pro-choice website. Because you're so honest.

Wow, putin, that last post was a masterpiece of evasiveness and issue dodging.

"Wow, putin, that last post was a masterpiece of evasiveness and issue dodging."

I can't help but laugh that you call him out when the true master of evasiveness and issue dodging is right here; known only as "fulhamish".

Actually when I said of feminists ''others might disagree'', I was thinking specifically of you Putin. It was actually an attempt to get an opinion on the matter out of you, but no matter. Perhaps someone else from the pro-choice camp might respond?

Slippery slope or line in the sand? Well we have your view already that abortion on demand should be available without time limit. It seems like you have descended to the very bottom of this particular slippery slope. I have posted the mechanics of late abortion and hope not to have to do so again, but that is is the barbarism with which you align yourself.

@ shock, what do you think I have been evasive on exactly?

What are you talking about Semck? You insist on me responding to every point, how about you insist on Fulham addressing a single point. Thanks.

Sex selection hasn't been fixed from abortion restrictions. Under the guise of combatting sex selection, anti-abortion extremists have tried to implement intrusive laws that would also lead to racial profiling of women who seek the procedure. The real solution is addressing the problem of gender inequality and stereotypes, a problem which pro-lifers have contributed exactly zero to solving.

@putin, fulhamish just addressed your Kenyan point while you were evading. What other points is he supposed to address?

As for what I was talking about -- you just actually came close (finally) to addressing it. I infer from your current post that you do indeed view sex selection abortion as wrong.

" I have posted the mechanics of late abortion and hope not to have to do so again, but that is is the barbarism with which you align yourself."

No, all you post are lies and you have refused to engage with a single counterargument I have provided on your bogus "partial birth abortion" claims, while claiming I have not addressed your questions. Just like you call me barbaric while insisting that I cease with personal attacks and address the issues. I don't think there is a person around here with less capacity for cognitive dissonance than you.

"What other points is he supposed to address?"

Thanks for jumping in without bothering to pay attention to the half dozen or so posts where I sum up everything he has avoided.

"@ shock, what do you think I have been evasive on exactly?"

Well, in general, everything that Putin has said.

We already have quite considerable racial data on abortions. It is highly disproportionately concentrated in the Black community. Some in that community attribute this to racism:
A controversial anti-abortion billboard that went up — and was taken down — in Soho last month targeting the black community with the tag line "The Most Dangerous Place for an African-American is in the Womb" sparked debate about the city's abortion rate.
Fifty-seven percent of black pregnancies in the city end in abortion, according to 2009 data from the city's Department of Health. For white women, the number is 20 percent and for the city overall it is about 39 percent. Though the number of abortions among black women remained steady for several years, the statistic startled some within the community.
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/mar/14/rate-abortion-sparks-debate-black-community/

"Slippery slope or line in the sand?"

Slippery slope. How about you address the point about desperate 13 year girls who fear the consequences of being pregnant being the moral equivalent of wife beaters and rapists. It's pretty sick of you to compare a vulnerable 13 year old pregnant girl who was pressured into sex with a rapist.

@ shock thank you for that generalisation.

What relevance does this have, in any way, whatsoever. Please enlighten me.

And right on cue, Fulham invokes the "black genocide" myth and throws another anti-abortion blog post in our face. Nevermind that black women have substantially more unplanned pregnancies than white women, or only 1 in 10 clinics are located in black neighborhoods.

Anti-abortion extremists are not above racial demagoguery and outright lying in order to make their point.

@fulhamish's post on abortion in the black community.

Putin to be clear what I call partial birth abortion you call D&X surgery. You have even advocated it.

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/evidencecheck/2011/01/19/Guttmacher-Advisory.pdf

This is racial demagoguery is it:
''We already have quite considerable racial data on abortions. It is highly disproportionately concentrated in the Black community. Some in that community attribute this to racism:''

Yet again, just as with sex selection, Putin throws an insult rather than address the argument

You even referred to it as D & X surgery. And thanks for acknowledging that nobody calls it partial birth abortion except anti-abortion zealots like you. It has no medical meaning whatsoever. It is a propaganda term invented by your ilk. And yes it is a safer procedure than any alternative for procedures past the 20th week. You have failed to address this point, as per usual.

I destroyed your argument with census data showing that fewer than 1 in 10 clinics are in black neighborhoods. I also said that black women have a higher incidence of unplanned pregnancy, likely due to disproportionate poverty. Rather than address poverty, you just want to attack medical service providers - providers of *contraception* and family planning which reduce unplanned pregnancy. Service providers which serve a disproportionately uninsured clientele, and are the only source of service many people get.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3002498.html

The differences between white and black women generally paralleled those between high- and low-income women: Compared with white women, black women had a higher pregnancy rate. The higher pregnancy rate for black women resulted from an unintended pregnancy rate that was almost three times that of white women. Because black women's unintended pregnancy rate was so high, the proportion of these women's pregnancies that ended in abortion (44%) was much higher than that of white women (22%).

Well we shall call it D & X surgery if you like. But, again just to be clear what is involved is exactly as I graphically posted previously. That very much does exist on a day to day basis. That is the barbarism you support, ''without limit''.
I have also mentioned that the procedure is the one of choice for the harvesting of foetal tissue.

"Four decades after its creation, the Guttmacher Institute continues to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights...."

Is this one of your neutral data sources, putin? Just curious of course.

"That very much does exist on a day to day basis."

It is a very small number. Smaller than the number of raped women who are pregnant, which you and your friends repeatedly claim is "statistically insignificant" in order to justify forcing victims of rape to carry fetuses to term.

And you still haven't addressed my counterargument, you just keep repeating that I support it and calling me barbaric, while refusing to address anything. Shameless hypocrisy.

"Is this one of your neutral data sources, putin? Just curious of course."

Did you bother to look at the sources of their data? Why should I play by rules you two don't play by? Do you deny that black women have higher unplanned pregnancies? Do you have a single solitary piece of evidence that suggests more than 1 in 10 clinics are in black neighborhoods? Thought not.

OK, I skimmed the study. Just doing that, I can already point to problems. You ask about the source of their data -- well, it's a questionaire they mail around themselves.

Now, you linked a source about distribution of abortion clinics by ethnic neighborhood. That cites another paper with a description of the actual survey they did. Note this interesting difference: in the methodology / statistics paper ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/4304111/pdf ), they say the following:

"The 378 specialized abortion clinics accounted
for 21% of all abortion providers, but performed 70% of
all abortions in 2008 (Table 4). Most of these facilities
reported 1,000 or more abortions during the year."

Looking at table 4, it's clear that "clinic" is a special category, not defined based on numbers. (In particular, while there are 378 clinics, there are 622 providers providing more than 400 abortions annually. Keep this number in mind).

Let's return now to your paper. They say, "Abortion clinics are defined as providers of 400 or more abortions annually."

In other words, they changed the definition of clinic between the source paper they cite _in the same paragraph_ and the geographic analysis paper they're doing at this point. Obvious terrible methodology that is extremely suspicious, and it took me 5 minutes to find that.

Oh, and you characterized this as "census data." Ha! This is THEIR census, not the US census.

Finally, you're the one who first brought up source quality, I believe, so it's perfectly fair to complain when you bring up a source of such terrible quality. Just because I may not have a source providing any number on this statistic does not mean I have to accept yours and its patently lopsided, terrible methodology.

I'm still yet to receive an answer to why higher abortion rates in black women is relevant to any of this.