Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India, where the gender ratio has declined to 1,000 boys to 900 girls nationally, and as low as 1,000 boys to 300 girls in some Punjabi cities. In China, the state-enforced “one child” policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun — “bare branches.” If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort girls and wait for a boy, to the point where in the first generation to grow to adulthood under this policy there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. In practice, a “woman’s right to choose” turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.
h/t Revnant Dream
Are these states playing God or just plain stupid.
Artificial selection is just plain wrong and this is also about men being better than women. try suggesting that we cull all female kittens and see what the pinkos have to say.
At the risk of restating the obvious: Once again the Law of Unintended Consequences bites the Progressive butt.
I recently had a um, dialogue with some commenters over at Kinsella's about the implications should (when?) the gene for homosexuality be discovered - the most significant being IMO the use of abortion and gene "therapy" to prevent children growing into adult homosexuals. There is a real possibility - again IMO - that homosexuality will come to be a 'condition' like downs syndrome that should be eliminated.
The homosexual community has been one of the big supporters of unlimited abortion choice. I wonder if they will do a volte face on it if such choice likely means their future decimation.
Some of those on the other side insisted that such choosing to prevent homosexuality is not an option many would make. I think they are naive.
....
As to the sex-based abortions: We had our first child in kelowna in '98 and the ultrasound techs and doctors were forbidden from telling us the sex of the child precisely because of this issue.
I worked in a lab with an asian immigrant in the summer of 2008 and he and his wife were not told the gender of the baby either.
Ah yes, "A Womb with a View"...
It will soon become the Wild Wild East in China as 50 million men have no marriageable prospect of any female company. Yep good luck with that issue...
The "abort-o-matics" now can add 'gendercide' to their not so illustrious resume.
In Canada of course we just nuture the children we wish to keep...because as we know Canada has no law on this issue. Thus Canada retains the lawlessness of the Wild Wild West.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, C in C
1st St. Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North"
Two types of birth control. The first when female fetuses are aborted, and the second when all of those men can't find a wife.
Yet another feminist idea that has backfired.
This same practice in the East Asian Community in the Vancouver / Lower Mainland part of our country just hop across the border into Washington State to a private medical clinic, fork over the moolah and have their baby identity revealed. Then either make plans for an abortion or plans on how to spend the dowry.
There is one point that remains a bit murky in this discussion. The notion that women in these societies "choose" to abort female fetuses is not that clear cut. I expect the pressure to bear male children stems from all sorts of societal expectations including that of the males within that society.
Time to re-popularize the monastery? Or perhaps these societies will structure around polyandry.
There are going to be some very bad wars coming in the next couple of decades.
No society can be stable when there are a large number of unattached (and never will be attached) males pumped up on hormones - China and India (or their proxies) will be going at it very soon - at the very least to get rid of some of the excess males. In fact there are some rumblings between China and Vietnam in the last couple of weeks.
Sew.Reap.Karma.Dept.
Stupidity brings it's own consequences, severe ones.
Supply and Demand ... It'll be very interesting in about 20 years, when there simply won't be any available woman for those many tens of millions of all those societally-chauvinist-brainwashed men in India and China.
The Law of Unintended Consequences bites the butt of the Radical Feminists Whackjobs who support Abortion.
God really has a sense of humor.
war used to be a great way of clearing the excess males. problem is ,war is now not so discriminating, the civilians usually taking the brunt of the casualties.
wait till the excess are unemployed, broke and have no prospects of marriage, the 18 to 30 demographic are the most dangerous. large roving gangs of millions will make Vancouver look like a kids party.
Only 300 females to 1,000 males? Watch the birth rate go way, way down.
There is nothing like having a billion man army of unmarried males to use for cannon fodder in the asian communist portfolio. Obamba and Hillary should be green with jealousy.
The bonus of course for an invasion army is female booty on the receiving end. Is anyone really that surprised that the Chinese did not have the foresight to see the future male surplus??
China's social unrest is inevitable. As noted, surplus males result in increased crime. Given the spoiled only-child syndrome found in recent articles about Chinese "Vampire Children", the young men may also turn on the communist government as their frustration builds, engaging in riots and protests.
Shipping the boys off to engage in foreign wars is one solutions but won't this increase resentment towards the communist government at home? The Chinese culture that prizes males so much that they kill off their baby girls is not likely to react well to their only permitted child (the son they rely on for support in old-age) being sent off to be killed on the front lines. I'd think riots and protests by angry parents might be the response in this situation as well.
It would be kinda ironic if the leftist-inspired population bomb scare and the one-child population control policy results in the disintegration of communist China.
So what's the problem? Fewer women = fewer feminists. That has to be a good thing. Now if we could only apply some retroactive abortion here in the West...
Somehow I doubt that a poor peasant in the boonies of India has access to an ultrasound machine. Ditto for China. If the stats really are that distorted even in the sticks, they'd have to be killing the babies after they're born.
Alex... They are killing the the babies after they're born. The ones that aren't killed are stolen and sold.
Some comments above referred to couples in this country not being told the gender to preclude just this sort of 'preferred' selection.
Which raises the issue of young couples getting ultrasounds in the first place. Notwithstanding any underying issues, otherwise healthy 20-somethings getting the procedure from an overstretched, over burdened healthcare system is just crazy.
Gee, that Alex is smart.
Alex- They're doing exactly that. Along with no ultrasound machines, they also have no way of determining cause of death, for the most part. Girl babies are born, and disposed of, and the authorities are never the wiser.
djb at June 29, 2011 12:20 PM
Alex... They are killing the the babies after they're born. The ones that aren't killed are stolen and sold.
One of the things that our missionaries to China/India in the 19th century figured out with simple deductive reasoning.....the total lack of first borns being female....
No ultra-sound needed.
A solution to the unattached males problem:
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2011/06/large-scale-marrying-of-african-women-can-effectively-solve-china’s-male-female-sex-ratio-imbalance-problem/
andycanuck- It's fairly obvious Shaidle hasn't met many Chinese people. They don't have much affection for black people.
With the influx of excessive hormone filled males into the workforce, one would gather that shepherd would be a much sought after profession.
Yeah, while in the fields the shepherds were tending their flocks... or is it flocking their tenders?
Gee, you would think that someone would see the imbalance and start turning out females to meet the demand for wives/progeny breeders. A whole new slave trade could flourish.
(perish the thought, btw)
Do we really have the population statistics for the whole of China, or are these figures for urban births, only? Urban births all over the world have plummetted in the last 50 years.
Half of China's people are rural, and large families in rural regions are what drove China and India's population huge population growth in the 20th cen. I'd bet the gender imbalance is not that large, for China as a whole: The solution to the urban imbalance may be found in a train ticket.
Do we really have the population statistics for the whole of China, or are these figures for urban births, only? Urban births all over the world have plummetted in the last 50 years.
Half of China's people are rural, and large families in rural regions are what drove China and India's population huge population growth in the 20th cen. I'd bet the gender imbalance is not that large, for China as a whole: The solution to the urban imbalance may be a train ticket.
"Alex- They're doing exactly that. Along with no ultrasound machines, they also have no way of determining cause of death, for the most part. Girl babies are born, and disposed of, and the authorities are never the wiser. "
That's what I figured ... but in that case, Mark Steyn is being dishonest; the phrase "Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India" is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst. Not that I'm surprised by this behavior - I've come to expect it from him - but it's still worth pointing out.
Yes, certain cultures kill female babies. And no, it's not the men forcing the mothers. It is much more complex than that. As the adoptive parent of a Chinese boy and soon-to-be of a Chinese girl, I am very aware of the cultural issues because I will have to explain them one day. This article is very enlightening. Here's a quote:
"...an older peasant woman tells the author, who has witnessed a newborn discarded in a pail of waste, “doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here.” When Xinran protests, the woman continues, “It's not a child. If it was, we'd be looking after it, wouldn't we? . . . Around these parts you can't get by without a son.” Baby girls don't count, the woman says, because the family does not get extra land when a girl is born."
So the Reds at Greenpeace have targeted VW. Yawn.
No doubt VW's opposition to CO2 caps is just the tip of the iceberg, and soon other horrors newly discovered in the depths of VW's satanic mills will be presented - in the public interest, of course - by Greenpeace or other branches of the radical network.
Who knows,in the promised episode II we may learn the villainous VW is paying substandard compensation in their new Chattannooga TN plant ( said to be $27/ hr. ), that the plant will be building Passats tailored to the tastes of the capitalist North American market, and that over 85% of each Passat will be sourced from NAFTA sources ( Great Satan, again. )
Has Greenpeace ever apologized for advocating the banning of DDT, which resulted in millions of deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia?
Likewise, a CO2 cap will limit cheap electricity in India and condemn millions in India to poverty and premature death due to poverty. Does Greenpeace care?
Mark Steyn is being dishonest; the phrase "Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India" is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst.
Typical leftist parsing of words. The outcome is the same.
I'm reminded of an old wise fellow I knew, who asked, "If the cat had kittens in the oven, would they be biscuits?"
"Typical leftist parsing of words. The outcome is the same. "
In a nation which offers an education to all, there is no excuse for this kind of ignorance.
"...but in that case, Mark Steyn is being dishonest; the phrase "Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India" is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst. Not that I'm surprised by this behavior - I've come to expect it from him - but it's still worth pointing out."
Alex, you twit, they're doing both. People in big cities in India and China can afford pre-natal tests, and abortions. Peasants usually can't. (In China, depending on the jurisdiction in which you live and on your Party connections, the state will murder your baby for you.)
You keep claiming you're not a troll, so stop acting like one.
Somewhere along the way I read that low-cost mobile ultrasound units were doing quite well roaming around rural India. The India gov't was attempting to regulate the practice but I doubt they are really able to stop it from happening.
Elsie Bennett - or care.
I'll give India this, it sure as hell ain't Pakistan.
Alex, if you are not going to do your own research, that problem is yours', not anyone else's.
What can be said that hasn't been said? We've played God in lieu of some backward cultural custom, shored up by lazy and twisted political correctness, and now we have this immense problem.
If the Chinese cannot find their own women to marry, they'll marry North Korean defectors:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/48663216/North-Korean-defectors
"Alex, if you are not going to do your own research, that problem is yours', not anyone else's."
That's pretty funny :) Care to explain how, in a nation where the vast majority don't have access to ultrasound, "sex-selective abortion" is "a way of life"?
I can lead you to water, but I can't make you drink.
Hey Alex
This is happening in LOS ANGELES... they used to advertise gender identification ultrasounds in the spanish-language classifieds... for the purpose of course of sex-selective abortions.
Right under your nose it seems...
Selective abortion would seem a perfectly reasonable way for people with insane cultural beliefs to Darwin their malfunctioning selves out of the gene pool. More! Faster!
Speaking of insane beliefs Trollex, any supportive evidence for your assertion that "...the vast majority don't have access to ultrasound..."? Because that sounds like something you pulled out of your @ss. Similar to most things you say.
I don't live in Los Angeles,so it's certainly not "under my nose". More importantly, though, I'm concerned by the fact that you, apparently, think Los Angeles is in India.
In the end, its a war on Women.
Just another part. Islam is the second front.
Enviromentalism the third rung.
This is the way they want to decress all human population down to a billion, or half that.
Nice number to run a slave empire World wide.
Just listen to Al Gore.
I read an article a couple of days ago that outlined how rich couples in India were sexually mutilating little girls at the age of one to be boys. How sick is that?
Incredibly sick, Rose.
We are reaping what we have sown. Imagine wifeless, angry soldiers in emerging economies. Imagine something similar happening here.
Alex, as I said, do the research. It's time to be a big boy.
Communism is good.
I am a Canadian of Chinese descent and my husband is a Canadian of East Indian descent and the crux of the matter in the two cultures is as follows:
In Chinese culture, a son will bring a wife into the family while a daughter will be married away to her husband's family. If you can only have one child and it's a girl, esp in the rural areas of China, once your daughter marries into her husband's family, you will be left alone and there will be no one to look after you in your old age. In a culture where it is your sons and their wives who look after you in your old age, if you take ill, there will be no support if you only have a girl. Also, there are lots of cultural connotations that suggest that you should have a son quickly. As well, in Chinese culture, abortion is just a fact of life. I recall as a child my grandmother talking matter of factly at dinner of a family who had more children than they could easily support that they should have aborted one or more of their children to stay financially afloat.
In East Indian culture, a son will marry a woman who will bring a dowry with her, whereas you will need to provide a dowry in order to be able to get rid of a daughter, so in the mindset of East Indians, a son is a valuable commodity that will enhance the family's wealth and a daughter is a drain on scarce resources that you will need to pay someone to get rid of. Sometimes two families with the same number of multiple children of similar ages but of opposite gender numbers will all arrange marriages under one contract and if one child in the set of say six matches up with someone else on their own, then it breaks up the entire contract.
Both cultures have always favoured males and have been getting rid of unwanted females for millennia. It's just that now they have more sophisticated way of doing it with technology and safe abortions.
Please note that while western culture didn't do away with females, before women could get a job and earn a living without lowering their social status significantly, if you've read Jane Austen, you will know that a family without sons and the family estate and income entailed along the male line, where the wife's dowry was small, it was a cause for concern for the wife and her daughters because they had no legal standing or claim to the family income if the husband dies before the wife and the daughters weren't married yet. So though western culture didn't do away with the unwanted females, it still favoured sons.
But the West grew out of it, Ethnic Tory. That's what makes Jane Austen's books awfully quaint.
Abortions aren't safe for the female baby.
Kate, are you saying that abortion is bad because the culture of China and India are misogynistic, or are you saying that Chinese and Indian misogyny is bad?
I disagree with the former, agree with the latter. We shouldn't restrict the freedom of everyone because a few use that freedom to ill effect.
I think this might make females much more valuable, and the custom of females providing a dowry will change to a female getting a dowry. The traditions are basically based on economics, and that would be the economic reaction.
Jordan, I didn't realise the freedom to kill one's offspring was absolute.