Poll: 77% support ban on sex-selection abortions. But why?

This from LifeNews.com:

A new poll conducted by the Lozier Institute found that 77% of respondents would support the enactment of laws prohibiting abortion in cases where “the fact that the developing baby is a girl is the sole reason for seeking an abortion.

The poll comes amid efforts to outlaw sex-selection abortion with the introduction in December of 2011 of HR 3541, the so-called Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. The act was introduced by Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona, and is co-sponsored by 96 Republicans and 3 Democrats in the House. Not surprisingly, pro-abortion groups have pledged their opposition.

Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called HR 3541 a “trumped up bill for a trumped up problem.” While the pro-abortion blogger at Jezebel writes that, “sex and race-selective abortion is a problem rampant only in its rampant nonexistence.”

I hate to admit it, but the pro-abortion groups are correct here.

No, they’re not correct in their belief that sex-selective abortions won’t occur (they will and do) or that sex-selection won’t become problematic (it will, especially as pre-natal testing becomes increasingly accurate at earlier stages of gestation.)

They’re correct only in that sex is a wholly arbitrary place to draw the ethical line.

Abortion advocates are simply being consistent with the fundamental belief that keeps abortion legal in the first place: the presupposition that the unborn should not be extended the benefit of human rights. With this in mind, the choice of sex as the single trait that should be above those upon which one chooses to terminate a pregnancy appears rather arbitrary.

The United Kingdom provides a perfect example. The U.K. already has a law on the books that bans sex-selective abortions. But you know what hasn't been banned? Abortions based on cleft palates and hair-lips.

While I believe that this law and those who support it are well-intentioned, it does absolutely nothing to address the issue, or to further the cause of life. Instead, it entrenches abortion in the legal system by arbitrarily giving preference to certain causes for it over others.

The fact that 77% of Americans would support such a law says little about their discomfort with the practice of abortion, and more about their unwillingness to confront the issue on a fundamental level.