China and the War on Girls through Female Infanticide

My introduction to female infanticide came in China in 1980.  The one-child policy had begun, and parents desperate to ensure that their only offspring would be a son took to drowning or suffocating their newborn daughters.  The advent of ultrasound technology in the mid-eighties allowed Chinese to learn the sex of their children before birth, with predictable results.  Sex-selective abortion supplanted, in part at least, female infanticide. 

FRONT ROYAL, VA. (P.R.I.) - My introduction to female infanticide came in China in 1980.  The one-child policy had begun, and parents desperate to ensure that their only offspring would be a son took to drowning or suffocating their newborn daughters.  The advent of ultrasound technology in the mid-eighties allowed Chinese to learn the sex of their children before birth, with predictable results.  Sex-selective abortion supplanted, in part at least, female infanticide.  The ratio of newborn boys to girls in China, which should be about 106 to 100, has been climbing steadily ever since.  Overall, there are now 117 boys born for every 100 girls, with some provinces posting ratios as high as 130 to 100.  This means that as many as one in four little girls are killed before or upon birth.  The shortage of girl children is obvious to anyone who visits rural China, as I have recently.  One sees elementary school classrooms where, out of a total of 30 students, 20 or so are boys.  On a national level, demographers predict that there will be 30 million more Chinese men than women of marriageable age by 2020.   The problem extends far beyond China, of course.  Consider the situation in India, which has a de facto two-child policy. A national survey published in The Lancet revealed that as many as half a million female fetuses are aborted there each year because of their gender.   The worst performing Indian state was Punjab, which saw only 775 births per 1,000 males births in 1999-2001.  This works out to a sex ratio at birth of 129 males to 100 females. The practice of female foeticide, as it is sometimes called, is also found in other "Confucian" cultures, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.  Vietnam, for example, has in recent years seen a spike in the number of male births compared with female births.  The South and Southeast Asian countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia also show unbalanced sex ratios.   Even more lopsided ratios are found in the Caucasus countries of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.   It may surprise some to learn that sex selective abortion is now being practiced by Asian-American immigrant communities in the U.S., Canada, and even Europe.  In Great Britain, for example, skewed sex ratios have been documented among mothers born in India.   Sex-selective abortion is rightly seen by many as the ultimate form of discrimination against women.  As investigative journalist Gita Aravamudan argues in her 2007 book, Disappearing Daughters: The Tragedy of Female Feticide, "Female infanticide is akin to serial killing. But female feticide is more like a holocaust. A whole gender is getting exterminated."   Sex selective abortion is increasingly being called "gendercide," especially in countries where it has reached massive proportions. Now you might think that, if there was any issue that pro-lifers and pro-abortion feminists could agree upon, it would be that abortions for reason of sex-selection should be banned. You would be wrong.
 
Despite the fact that fully 86 percent of those Americans surveyed in a 2006 Zogby/USA Today poll believe that it is wrong to end the life of an unborn child simply because of its sex, the feminists refuse to countenance any restrictions on their radical abortion rights. Consider the position of Ms. Magazine, in many ways the flagship publication of the feminist movement. This arbiter of the feminist ideal recently published, in its Winter 2011 edition, an article by Madeline Wheeler entitled "Saving the Girl Child" which detailed "India's epidemic of female infanticide and sex-selection abortion." This is probably the first time that the magazine has cast abortion-any abortion--in an unfavorable light.  After all, as Gloria Steinem made clear in the 1970s, abortion is the sacrament of the radical feminist movement.  Sacrificing one's own children on the altar of "reproductive freedom" is apparently the only way that the true feminist can free herself from the hated fetters of marriage and motherhood.  Yet even the most committed feminist must be troubled that the right to abort a pregnancy for any reason or for no reason has resulted in the selective elimination of tens of millions of female babies.  Madeline Wheeler herself calls sex-selection abortion a "problem," and equates it to baby-killing by saying that, "Even worse, families unable to afford ultrasound procedures often resort to infanticide." But this is as far as she is wiling to go. Like most feminists, she wants the Indian government to solve the problem of sex-selective abortion without interfering with the sacrosanct right to abortion.  For this reason she praises New Delhi's campaign to "Save the Girl Child," which involves putting on fashion shows, designing special birthday cards for girls, and sponsoring public lectures by doctors about the evils of sex-selection abortions.  She applauds, in particular, "government schemes offering cash incentives to families to raise girls." It would be easy to regard female infanticide and, by extension, female feticide, as traditional practices-the Chinese Communist Party would say "feudal"-that modernization, industrialization and rising levels of education will soon extinguish.  This is, in fact, precisely what the Beijing regime has been claiming since the onset of the one-child policy in 1980 sparked the selective elimination of girls.   It is also why Wheeler places her hope in propaganda campaigns. Traditional explanations for son preference-such as the ones that I heard from Chinese peasants, for example-do revolve around carrying on the family name.  But propping up these cultural practices are stern economic realities.  In both India and China, girls are transitory members of a family, since they marry out, generally leaving home upon marriage to take up residence with their husband and his in-laws.  That is to say, just as they enter into their productive years, they cease to contribute labor or goods to their natal family. This makes them, as the Chinese say, "Goods on which one loses."  Moreover, even while girls remain in the family they generally earn less than boys. In traditional times, this preference for sons led to female infanticide or, in wealthier areas, to couples simply continuing to reproduce until they conceived a son.  Not so very long ago, every Chinese village of any size contained at least a few families who had had five, six, or seven girls in succession, followed by a little brother.  The point of their reproductive exuberance was to end with a son. Government demands to limit childbearing to one (China) or two (India, Vietnam, and South Korea) means that parents no long enjoy this option of simply continuing to reproduce until they conceive a son. In this way, population control programs combine to reinforce the age-old bias toward boys and make the womb a disproportionately dangerous place for girls. Perhaps paying families to raise girls will make a difference on the margins, as Wheeler believes, saving some lives.
 
But only by banning the practice of selectively aborting girls can this heinous practice be stopped, and then only if the ban is rigorously enforced.  There are laws on the books in both India and China against sex-selective abortion, but they are ignored by both the authorities and the populace.  And girls continue to die in horrific numbers.

Announcing NEW Catholic Online News - Visit Today!

Most American feminist leaders have remained silent in the face of this modern misogyny, afraid that any compromise on the issue of abortion might weaken what they consider to be their constitutional right to take the lives of their unborn children. Their refusal to brook any limits on abortion rights has led to one of the bitterest ironies of our post-feminist age: that the abortion license touted as the key to liberating future generations of women would be the preferred means of eliminating them. The only sure protection for unborn baby girls lies not in the law, of course, but in the human heart.  No one who recognizes the humunity of the unborn would sacrifice them for any reason, least of all their sex. 

The fears of the radical feminists are thus not totally misplaced.  To recognize the inalienable right to life of unborn girl children will surely call into question the legitimacy of abortion itself.  

---

PRI is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. We work to reverse the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. To date, we have successfully eliminated $790 million in U.S. tax dollars to International Planned Parenthood, UNFPA, and other anti-life aboritionists while redirecting much of this to family friendly programs like Child Survival.

See our current project.

Donate now to directly affect the lives and well-being of mothers and children around the world.