AUSTIN, Texas — This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club has invited Professor
John Robertson, who holds the Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law, and who specializes
in law and bioethics to debate the ethics and legalities of sex selection with
Barbara Katz Rothman, a professor of sociology in the Ph.D. program of the City
University of New York, and author of such books as Recreating Motherhood
and the Tentative Pregnancy.
For a link to the ongoing debate, see http://www.legalaffairs.org/webexclusive/debateclub_sex-selection0306.msp.
Professor Robertson argues that non-medical sex selection for second and subsequent
children should be recognized as an aspect of the reproductive rights recognized
by the Supreme Court, and that choice of a child's sex is consistent with full
protection of women's rights in other areas. Professor Rothman believes that
sex selection practices are inherently sexist, and that encouraging them will
further reify the significance of sex in society and make it harder to realize
equal rights for women.
About the Legal Affairs Debate Club
More than a year ago, Legal Affairs magazine launched the online feature
Debate Club (www.legalaffairs.org/debateclub)
where top legal scholars and practitioners hash out current issues in the law
in week-long debates. The Debate Club has attracted Richard Posner, Geof Stone,
Sandy Levinson (UT Law), Brian Leiter (UT Law), Eugene Volokh, and Jack Balkin,
among others to engage in an a debate with four to five postings a weeks with
an invited scholar who has an opposite point of view.
Related Links:
About Prof. John Robertson: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/jr43/