China: The Consequence of Sex Selection
Thanks to China's one child policy, mixed with what I consider to be a eugenics mindset that sees boys as more valuable than girls--certainly based in part on cultural issues and the perceived need of parents to be cared for in old age--there will soon be 30 million more men of marriageable age than women. From the story in the Chicago Sun Times: "Sex-selective abortion is prohibited, but the government says the practice remains widespread, especially in rural areas. The report said China's sex ratio for newborns in 2005 was 118 boys to 100 girls, a big jump from 110 to 100 in 2000. In some regions, such as the southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, the ratio has ballooned to 130 boys to 100 girls."
Sex selection is big in India, too. Moreover, if transhumanists and other assorted Brave New Worlders get their way and parents begin to pick and choose the attributes they want in their children--from sex, to capacities, to even disability--such imbalances could someday become the norm.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:18 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
Post-birth infanticide on girls is also pretty rife in these countries. That's part of why such bans as there are on sex-selection abortions are ineffective. I've even read that little girls have less of a chance of surviving than do boys in Chinese orphanages, which one would think of as being run by the best of people. But evidently it ain't necessarily so. I suppose this is because they think the girls have less of a chance of being adopted than the boys.
For some reason, murder by nicotine poisoning is a big hit in India; I've read a couple of entirely separate stories to this effect. I guess this is because plants with high concentrations of nicotine in the leaves are readily available in the country, so the infant girl is just fed juice from them after being brought home. There are mothers berated in the delivery room by their relatives for having given birth to a girl. It's all a horrible situation. I cannot imagine it.
Or do I just mean "tobacco poisoning"? Not necessarily the same thing as nicotine. I apologize for the probable error.
The problem is bad in India too. There are some places where it is 150-100.
The boy girl disparity is going to result in more human and sex trafficking. You'd think it would make women more valuable, but it's going to exploit them more and lower their status. The abortion feminists/population planners won't say a thing-at least they aren't now, because it involves abortion.
I'd hate to be China or India's neighbors. The internal unrest is going to be huge.
"There are mothers berated in the delivery room by their relatives for having given birth to a girl."
That's why Henry VIII grew tired of Anne Bolyne. Yet, the *father* decides the sex of the child.
Meanwhile, we are wiping people with Down off the face of the earth and presume we have the wisdom to choose which human attributes are better than others.
Gregory L. Ford:
It's good for parents who know they are not capable of caring for a Down Syndrom baby to know in advance so that they can either make preparations to change their lifestyles to accomodate their small person, or to find a good, capable family (prefereably members of the same family) to either adopt their little one (open adoption is a wonderful thing) or help them raise their small person.
Bad side - most people don't do those things. They'd rather kill their little one than put up with the difficulties inhereint in raising a baby with special needs. Talk about using a good thing to a bad end.
Lydia, Don, and Wesley:
"Justice for All," a pro-life organization that I deeply admire, visited my campus twice in my time there, and once all the members wore pro-Feminist ribbons and were giving them out. When a Feminist group came over to harass them, they brought up the India and China sex selection issues, to which the feminist group could not repsond with anything more intelligent than, "Well we're not talking about India and China, we're talking about America." One of the JfA ladies came back with, "So you're all right with human right's violations in other countries as long as you can have an abortion in America?"
Never did hear the answer - I had to head to class. I know she ticked off the woman she was talking to, though. People in this country don't realize that their quest for more convinence has wide-ranging effects, and that they can hurt just about anybody.
The kicker is that just because a baby is born "normal," that doesn't mean there won't be accidents, illness, or other problems down the road that could enable that child to become disabled.
And then what? Oh, I forgot, more "ethicists" are advocating killing anybody with a disability.
Would-be parents need to realize there are no guarantees in this life.
TEF, thanks for the illustration. It speaks loudly.
I think this whole post shows what happens when human beings try to engineer human life and a pain free society. I think it also demonstrates that good technology can be used for evil and that science and technology must always be tethered to ethics, an ethics of Human Exceptionalism.
Regarding Down Syndrome Babies, I've interviewed Wesley several times now for our show. One of the most memorable comments he's made to us-at least to me in regard to the genetic cleansing of Down Syndrome people, is that some of the most womderful people he's ever known are mentally disabled people.
15 years ago, when I was a youth minister taking heat from my church for my pro-life views, a woman with a 40 year old retarded daughter came up to tell me how much she appreciated my advocacy. She said that most would say a child like that should not be brought into the world, but that since her husband had died-several years previous-this mentally disabled daughter had been "such a comfort" to her. She said that people in the church would ask her daughter to pray for them on big things because they considered she had such a pure spirit that God would certainly listen to her.
One of the other comments that sticks out on this issue came from an interview with Nina Fuller (www.ninafuller.org) who runs the S.M.I.L.E on Down Syndrome Parent Network. Nina said that her Down Syndrome child devastated her... it knocked her off the merry go round of her perfect world... Perfect kids, perfect husband, perfect social life and world... It was devastating, but she said that her daughter with Down Syndrome has been such a blessing to her and her family that her other children asked her and her husband if they could adopt a baby like their sister with Down Syndrome.
Our societal engineer's desire to create a pain free world by, in part, genetic cleansing and getting rid of people who make special challenges on us, is in the long run depriving us of some very special gifts, especially the kind of gifts that exude the love that these mentally disabled people bring. We also lose because in the process of meeting these demands, we grow to a level of being or depth of our humanity that we could never achieve without their demands.
Don, you took flak from your church for your pro-life views? What kind of church was this? That's very bizarre. Or was it an Episcopal church? Now _that_ I could understand. :-)
Lydia,
It was a mainline Baptist church, though I think that most of the members in that denomination are probably conservative. I laugh about it now. I'm not unique by any means. I would say it's not uncommon for today's evangelical church too, though not the norm.
By the way, I don't feel bad at all. I have way more impact behind the microphone interviewing the best of the right to life movement each week. To chat with and squeeze all the info we can out of people like Wesley, Jeri Lynn Ward, James P. Kelley, David Prentice, Rita Marker, Doug Johnson, Hadley Arkes, Robert George, Frank Beckwith, Jack Wilke, Alvin Toeffler, Vincent Fortenace, Norma McCorvey, Pat Anderson, Burke Balche, Bishop Chaput, Serrin Foster, Steve Mosher and so many, many more and introduce these people and their message to our audience is absolutely-it is absolutely unbelievable-maybe not to the listeners, but it is to me. No matter how much you prepare, there's no way you could ever know all the things they are going to bring out. It is a rush to be part of the human exceptionalism movement in that way... to connect people to the bright stars of the movement. Sometimes we benefit from bad experiences!
Some would say that one of those on that list is actually a dim bulb. : )
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