Unnatural Selection

As the father of two girls, this article from the Wall Street Journal made me very sad.

"The War Against Girls" by Jonathan V. Last
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

This article reviews this book:
"Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men" by Mara Hvistendahl

Back to the article:
"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."

"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."

"Ms. Hvistendahl argues that such imbalances are portents of Very Bad Things to come. 'Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live,' she writes. 'Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent.'"

"In Chinese provinces where the sex ratio has spiked, a crime wave has followed. Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio."

"The economist Gary Becker has noted that when women become scarce, their value increases, and he sees this as a positive development. But as Ms. Hvistendahl demonstrates, 'this assessment is true only in the crudest sense.' A 17-year-old girl in a developing country is in no position to capture her own value. Instead, a young woman may well become chattel, providing income either for their families or for pimps. As Columbia economics professor Lena Edlund observes: 'The greatest danger associated with prenatal sex determination is the propagation of a female underclass,' that a small but still significant group of the world's women will end up being stolen or sold from their homes and forced into prostitution or marriage."

"Ms. Hvistendahl also dredges up plenty of unpleasant documents from Western actors like the Ford Foundation, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, showing how they pushed sex-selective abortion as a means of controlling population growth. In 1976, for instance, the medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Malcom Potts, wrote that, when it came to developing nations, abortion was even better than birth control: 'Early abortion is safe, effective, cheap and potentially the easiest method to administer.'"

But this book takes its wrong turns, too, as the article points out:
"It is telling that Ms. Hvistendahl identifies a ban on abortion—and not the killing of tens of millions of unborn girls—as the 'worst nightmare' of feminism. Even though 163 million girls have been denied life solely because of their gender, she can't help seeing the problem through the lens of an American political issue. Yet, while she is not willing to say that something has gone terribly wrong with the pro-abortion movement, she does recognize that two ideas are coming into conflict: 'After decades of fighting for a woman's right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right.'"

"Despite the author's intentions, 'Unnatural Selection' might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of 'choice.' For if 'choice' is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against 'gendercide.' Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's 'mental health' requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: 'I have patients who come and say "I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra."'"

The article powerfully concludes:
"This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it. "