Uncommon Commentary #274: Chevalier Was Right to Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Some reflections on the failed effort to outlaw sex-selective abortion in the USA:
It's not possible to determine the sex of a child until 20 weeks into the pregnancy; since this is more than halfway through the human gestation period of 274 days, nobody with at least an ounce of sense can pretend that a human fœtus at this point of development does not yet qualify as a human being.
The tally in the House of Representatives was 246-168, which means that, in a body where the GOP has a substantial majority, just 59.4 percent of our legislators voted in favor of a civilized standard of morality and against that of savages. (A mere 20 Democrats voted for the bill, and even seven Republicans opposed it).
Had it passed, the law would have been practically unenforceable (because, in this country, abortion can be induced for almost any excuse imaginable; a woman need not admit that she doesn't want to give birth to a girl), but the fact that it would've been almost purely symbolic means that even a congressman who considers fœticide permissible for the sake of sex selection had nothing to lose by voting for this ban (unless he was beholden to pro-choicers so witlessly intransigent as to regard even the slightest restriction on abortion as an encroachment upon their "rights").