In her recently released book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, reporter Mara Hvistendahl delves into the subject of sex-selection abortion, its causes and possible consequences of a world which is missing more than 160 million girls and women (which roughly equals the entire female population of America).
Hvistendahl details how pro-abortion groups who were obsessed with population control like International Planned Parenthood and Population Council used grants from the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund to export abortion to Asia. While many Asian countries have histories of preferring boys over girls, they weren’t able to seek out and abort baby girls until ultrasound technology allowed them to see inside the womb. Ultrasounds, a preference for boys, population control pressures (like China’s one-child policy) and massive amounts of funding from Western pro-choice groups combined to make something which was once unthinkable into a common occurrence.
Now instead of having a roughly equivalent number of boys and girls, countries like China, India and Vietnam all have unnatural ratios where there are 112 boys for every 100 girls in India and 121 boys for every 100 girls in China.
Sex-selection abortion has even crept its way into America where some Asian communities in the United States have imbalanced sex ratios, especially for second and third births if the first born child is a girl.
In her book, Hvistendahl notes she favors legal abortion yet is opposed to sex-selection abortion. This puts her worldview in a conundrum as she believes abortion should be a woman’s choice, but then thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to choose abortion based on the sex of their child.
If abortion advocates believe abortion is a “reproductive right” which women should be allowed to freely exercise then on what principled basis can they then claim women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions based on the sex of their child? As columnist Mark Steyn writes, “a ‘woman's right to choose’ is the right to choose not to have any women.”
Hvistendahl can point to the possible consequences of having imbalanced sex ratios such as rises in crime, sex-trafficking, bride-buying, etc. when millions of Asian men are unable to find spouses. However, she can’t express why it would be morally wrong for women to choose to kill their daughters in-utero. Those in favor of legal abortion base their position on the idea that a woman’s choice exceeds any moral standing the unborn child has. If that’s the case, it makes no sense to claim some of those choices are wrong.
Unlike abortion advocates, prolifers can clearly articulate why they are opposed to killing female unborn children: Killing innocent unborn human beings because they aren’t the sex you desire is wrong in the same way that killing newborns who aren’t they sex you want is wrong. The born and the unborn are both valuable human beings who deserve protection.
To learn more about abortion, please visit Right to Life of Michigan’s web site at www.rtl.org.
