The contentious nature of abortion in American politics is “distracting U.S. policymakers from what should be the real conversation in a country that leads the world in human reproductive technology: whether to allow parents to use a growing range of methods to select for characteristics like sex (or diseases that come on late in life and, perhaps one day, IQ) in their children. Because sex selection is not just a developing world problem – it’s an American problem, too,” Mara Hvistendahl, a Beijing-based correspondent with Science magazine, writes in a Foreign Policy opinion piece.

She concludes, “Activists on both the right and the left might now be wise to abandon the abortion fray and considering speaking out for restraint in other areas. Governments in Asia have introduced measures to address sex-selective abortion, and Western support for those measures is critical. But beyond that, the United States should now lead in addressing the new technologies emerging from within our borders. We owe as much to the world, and to future generations – so that next time it can’t be said that we knew and yet chose not to act” (7/26).