Despite the author's pro-abortion view, a new book on the global impact of female infanticide devastates the argument for "choice" while predicting increased violence, depressed economies, and a worrisome growth in human trafficking unless the practice is stopped.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting on a new book by journalist Mara Hvistendahl entitled, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men in which she claims the birth ratio between boys and girls has become dangerously imbalanced.
"We've never seen an imbalance at this level," says Hvistendahl, a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Asia correspondent for Science Magazine.
In Asia alone, an estimated 160 million women - more than the entire female population of the U.S. - has been eliminated. This is creating millions of "surplus men" who will never be able to marry because there won't be enough women to go around, Hvistendahl writes.
While most people associate female infanticide with cultures that prize boys such as China or India, it is also a problem in Vietnam, Azerbaijan, the Republic of Georgia and Albania where gender-selection abortions have reached epidemic proportions.
Hvistendahl paints a dismal picture of a world where there are not enough women. For instance, in cultures where men are deprived of women, they often resort to other means to acquire them, such as sex trafficking, prostitution, sales of child brides and the kidnapping of girls or women.
Because men are known to be more violent than women, with unmarried men being more violence prone than married men, many governments are beginning to fear unrest - and for good reason. In her research, Hvistendahl discovered that in Chinese provinces where the sex ratio has spiked, a crime wave has followed. Likewise, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area in India today is not income but sex ratio.
"Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live," she writes. "Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent."
She has also uncovered evidence that having more men who cannot marry dampens the economy because if they're not having families, they don't need as many consumer goods.
For those Westerners who think this is a problem that doesn't affect them, she issues a stark warning: "The gender imbalance is a local problem in the way a superpower's financial crisis is a local problem, in the way a neighboring country's war is a local problem. Sooner or later, it affects you."
Sadly, the U.S. bears some of the responsibility for this problem, she contends. Her research uncovered many documents from Western organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, which reveal 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."
Even though Unnatural Selection is being touted as one of the most important books ever written on the subject of gender imbalance, reviewers are disappointed by the way Hvistendahl interjects her pro-abortion political views into the work.
For instance, she claims to be particularly worried that the "right wing" or the "Christian right" will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself.
She also says that something must be done about the problem of aborting so many females or it could lead to "feminists' worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions."
In a review appearing in the Wall Street Journal, Jonathon V. Last found it to be "telling" that Hvistendahl calls a ban on abortion rather than 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," he writes. "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.'"
Hvistendahl suggests ways to curb female infanticide without imposing on abortion "rights", such as banning the use of ultrasound to determine a child's sex. She envisions this ban as being rigorously enforced by governments that would result in seeing doctors, ultrasound techs and nurses tossed into jail for violations.
"Despite the author's intentions, Unnatural Selection might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion," writes Last.
"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'."
This is where choice leads, Last says. "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."
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