The War Against Girls

[American]

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons

Link

By JONATHAN V. LAST
Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.
In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.
Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.
What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence.

I'm amazed that this is still going on. Thought China and others had learned their lesson.

 

[Ikari]

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons

Link



I'm amazed that this is still going on. Thought China and others had learned their lesson.

China...learn it's lesson? No, they like their authoratative government with complete control over the lives of its People. While the do have a population problem, there are also other social and economic problems which force parents into needing a son. But this is going to produce a very distinct shift in the boys to girls ratio. That's definitely going to cause some problems down the road.

 

[StillBallin75]

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons

Link

I'm amazed that this is still going on. Thought China and others had learned their lesson.

This is sad, but unsurprising. I'm not amazed one bit, and the truth is people will do whatever it takes to make life easier on themselves.

 

[Wolf_22]

they lost me a bit with the attacks on abortion.

is it so much better to go back to killing female infants?

I don't think most people would agree. but sometimes I worry that these antiabortion people are more bothered by aborted pregnancies and 'killed' fetuses than dead infant girls.

the larger issue is not valuing women, and its expressed by sex selective abortion or by just plain killing your daughters (or other women when they don't benefit you)

I do not know how to change this idea

 

[spud_meister]

The practice of killing female kids has gone on long before abortion came into play.

 

[Paschendale]

they lost me a bit with the attacks on abortion.

is it so much better to go back to killing female infants?

I don't think most people would agree. but sometimes I worry that these antiabortion people are more bothered by aborted pregnancies and 'killed' fetuses than dead infant girls.

the larger issue is not valuing women, and its expressed by sex selective abortion or by just plain killing your daughters (or other women when they don't benefit you)

I do not know how to change this idea

Well said. Let's keep our eye on the ball. Sexism is the problem, not abortion (which is, of course, a cure for some sexism).

 

[Councilman]

Seriourly I thought this was common knowledge for the the last twenty plus years.

Girls are a drain on family income and boys can be

 

[Temporal]

What lesson is there for China to learn? They have a very firmly rooted traditional culture where boys are favored, and that is meeting head on with modern population management. Old meets new. What do you think matters more to most individuals - gender disparity in the nation, or making their family the best it can be?

Also, I can't help but notice how sneaky the OP is... bringing gender demographics into the abortion debate. They are fetuses, not girls. It's also illegal to find out the sex via ultrasound in China, so on a policy level, there is no war on girls happening. The only war I'm seeing right now in this thread is from the OP, directed at China as the scapegoat while trying to pull a not-so-clever turnaround to the abortion debate in America.

It's also plainly obvious to see the irony that someone who is in favor of removing a woman's right to choose in the U.S. is remarking on the war on female fetuses in a land far, far away. It's easy to talk about some problem 'over there', isn't it? I think America is plenty screwed up right now in that department too, the only difference is I have more say in how it is dealt with.

If you want human rights you must promote them all, otherwise you just end up promoting a gradual erosion of all of them by proxy of stopping the rights you arbitrarily don't like. That's also called compromise and respecting human freedom even if it sometimes disgusts you. I realize this concept is foreign to many modern Americans but it is the basis of our constitution and our bill of rights.