The recent post by Shohini Ghosh on the first episode of Satyameva Jayate has raised key questions around the complicated relationship between abortion as such and the selective abortion of female foetuses. This dilemma is one with which the women’s movement in India has been grappling since the late 1980′s. In this post, I would like to move away completely from the television programme, especially because there the focus was on women who were forced to have abortions after sex determination, on which there is little to debate. I am concerned here with the more troubling question that Shohini also raises, of how to understand a situation in which women themselves decide to have sex selective abortions. I outline here the main contours of feminist debate and activism over close to three decades, that have circled around complex understandings of ethics and agency in the context of women’s control over their bodies. I conclude by stating my own position on the issue, which is not necessarily the position taken by the movement as such.