| Gender before Birth: Sex Selection in a Transnational Context Subjects: Sex preselection -- Social aspects; Human reproductive technology -- Social aspects; Sex of children Parental preferences for; Feminism; Science -- Social aspects; In the mid-1990s, the international community pronounced prenatal sex selection via abortion an "act of violence against women" and "unethical." At the same time, new developments in reproductive technology in the United States led to a method of sex selection before conception; its US inventor marketed the practice as "family balancing" and defended it with the rhetoric of freedom of choice. In Gender before Birth , Rajani Bhatia takes on the double standard of how similar practices in the West and non-West are divergently named and framed. Rajani Bhatia is assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. |