The prosecutor in the Cleveland kidnappings case has revealed that he may seek aggravated murder charges against the alleged captor, Ariel Castro, because Castro is accused of repeatedly beating and starving one of the women in order to force several miscarriages. This particular detail has caused quite the stir because it casts a fetus in the role of a murder victim, which makes many pro-choice advocates profoundly uncomfortable. I think it's for the same reasons that expressing opposition to sex-selective abortion raises such anxiety here in Canada: It forces people to focus on the fetus rather than the mother.

There is no justification for aborting a fetus because one simply doesn't like its sex. Unfortunately, however, those who often elect to have abortions based on the sex of the fetus do not do so out of whimsy; rather, their decision is based upon cultural backwardness. These types of abortions do nothing to strengthen cultures. They weaken them, and allow them to continue to operate in a barbarically chauvinistic mindset that might have had its time in the Middle Ages, but today, is absolutely repugnant; especially in Canada.