The focus of this paper is how the “capabilities approach” of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen might best address the debate about the relationship between human rights and sex-selective abortion around the world. This debate was fanned into flame recently by the publication of Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection. Hvistendahl is a self-identified prochoice feminist, but her book on international sex-selective abortions became an instant political football in the United States, in part because of its sharp criticism of the international development policies of Western governments and non-governmental organizations in the areas of reproductive health. The capabilities approach can address this debate about the relationship between human rights and sex-selective abortion at many points. For example, this debate predictably migrates through familiar questions about balancing the rights of adult women against the rights—and more broadly, the moral status—of prenatal human life. Although some of Nussbaum’s work suggests that prenatal human life has a low moral status, she notes in her 2011 book Creating Capabilities that the capabilities approach does not set the contours of an abortion right (even though it guides us in what to think about in debating abortion). Yet her recent paper with Rosalind Dixon, “Abortion, Dignity, and a Capabilities Approach,” claims that the capabilities approach supports something like a gradualist position on both prenatal moral status and abortion rights, and even acknowledges the possibility and plausibility of arguing from the capabilities approach to a high moral status for prenatal human life. Amartya Sen and his former student Jennifer Prah Ruger, each have recent discussions that are relevant to this debate, as well. This short paper will begin with a brief summary and discussion of Nussbaum’s work in Dr. DiSilvestro’s 2010 book Human Capacities and Moral Status. Relevant arguments will then be examined from the most recent work by Nussbaum, Sen, and Ruger. Finally, it will be argued that the best way for the capabilities approach to address the debate about the relationship between human rights and sex-selective abortion around the world (1) allows some flexibility in setting the contours of an abortion right, and (2) increases the overall coherence, plausibility, and fruitfulness of the capabilities approach.