The truth about sex-selection abortion
A book titled ‘Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men’ addresses the issue of sex-selection abortion. Choosing boys over girls has led to “163 million missing women”, according to author Mara Hvistendahl, mostly in Asia where there is a cultural preference for baby boys. The situation is marked in China were a one-child policy limiting family size entwined with a cultural preference for boys has lead to more abortions of baby girls.
Mara Hvistendahl travelled to nine countries and interviewed doctors, demographers, mothers who aborted their daughters, women who were sold by their families, and men with no prospects of marriage. As she learned more about this demographic crisis, it became clear that many problems ensue when high numbers of female babies are aborted.
Consequences of this sex-imbalance are described in the book: women are kidnapped and forced into marriage, or worse, prostitution. She sees a bleak future for Asian societies, a future likely to be less stable and more violent.
However, Hvistendahl is hesitant to criticize abortion. Although she sees the problem with sex-selection abortions, she does not think anything should be done about abortion. She advances that, “in union with population pressures and technology, choice has been perverted.”
Unfortunately, the author flinches from the truth that if ‘choice’ is what justifies abortion then it will be impossible to fight this ‘gendercide’.