Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With a national study showing the possibility that the practice of sex-selection abortions has made its way from Asia to the United States, a leading pro-life Congressman says a ban on the practice is needed. Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican held a press conference today on why the bill is necessary.

Franks is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a ranking member of the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee and he says unborn children are potentially being denied their civil rights.

In April, researchers Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund of the National Academy of Sciences say their analysis of the 2000 Census shows the odds prematurely increasing for Asian-American families from China, Korea and India to have a boy if they already have a girl child.

The data "suggest that in a sub-population with a traditional son preference, the technologies are being used to generate male births when preceding births are female," they wrote in the paper.

Responding to the problem, Franks has introduced the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, which would prohibit knowingly performing or financing sex-selection abortions.

Franks says the problem encompasses more than just sex-selection issues.

"It is estimated that as many as 50% of African-American babies conceived in the U.S. each year are eliminated by government subsidized abortion providers," he explains.

'Following the unearthing of the nation-wide race-targeted abortion donations, civil rights activists and African-American pastors from across the country protested government acquiescence in race-targeted abortion and the government funding of clinics that they believe are purposefully placed in the inner city and targeted to minority women," he added.

As a result, Frank's bill also prohibits doing or funding abortions on the basis of race.

That aspect of the measure struck a chord with a number of top pro-life African-Americans. Dr. Alveda King, Day Gardner, and Reverend Clenard Childress joined Franks at the unveiling of the bill to highlight this section of it.

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