Comments about ‘Selective abortions creating imbalanced world population, leading to more child marriages, violence, author says’

So, because the Western World has created technology to monitor and improve prenatal care and has shared it with the world, it's now our fault that other countries are choosing to abuse the technology and use it for their own nefarious purposes? Hvistendahl is making a rather bold assertion that the West is somehow propagating this practice. While it's true that Western movements have emboldened people in these countries with the notion that abortion should be a choice, here it is not based on the notion that people should be able to do it because they aren't happy with the child's gender. I do believe these countries will face major social repercussions by allowing these practices to continue.

I'm going to get flamed for saying this but I don't believe we have an overpopulation problem, rather we have a resource management problem. People are starving yet we throw out food; rich vs poor; people with huge tracts of land and people who can't afford decent housing.

The problem with governments setting laws about how many children you can have or whether you are allowed to find out the gender, etc. all suffer from the same flaw that you cannot legislate ideals. Ideals come from education, not legislation. Banning ultrasounds & other restrictions will do nothing.

Only as we change our ideals about how we manage our planet's affairs will things like selective breeding go away. Be a little more like King Benjamin.

This author completely contradicts herself in this book. She is pro-choice - she believes abortion should be available to all women, and yet, she wants to ban ultrasounds. Are you kidding me? You don't get it both ways - how do you allow women to have the freedom of choice to kill a child, but not any freedom of choice to see what the child is.

If you want to stop the killing of female babies, how about banning elective abortions completely.

A boy being better than a girl is really an Eastern preconception. Remember, a lot of those countries still have arranged marriages where the parents of the wife must pay a dowry to the family of the husband.

China had a terrible time with it during the age of the One Child Policy and it drastically skewed their population towards the male side... however thanks to serious efforts by the Chinese government it is starting to balance out.

Though, if we really look at it, less women in the world is probably a good thing as far as the planet is concerned. One man can impregnate hundreds of women... but once a woman is pregnant she's "out of service" for nearly a year... and once you get into the 5th, 6th, 7th pregnancy the odds of genetic defects showing start getting really high. Creating life is a beautiful and infinitely complex process and the modern human female just isn't designed to be a baby factory. Combine that with most cultures practicing monogamy and having a world where males outnumber females will eventually cause the population to shrink.

I stand for free agency and I am 100% pro choice! The difference for me is that women had the choice to get pregnant... accusing pro-life people of not allowing 'choice' is a fallacy as the freedom to choose is not prohibited by anti-abortion law, where pro-abortion law only serves to ellude the consequences of our choices- something a true legal system would not encourage or permit.

Women everywhere who use abortion as birth control, men who push women for their selfish interests, and law makers who refused to listen to reason and took the easy path of siding with those who with to destroy religious freedom and do whatever they want without facing any consequences... I would ask anyone in these categories to consider this... God is real, consequences are real, and someday we will all face up to our actions. I am not saying people will burn and suffer... I'm saying that we must all inevitably face the truth and will have nothing to hide behind, no false premise, no popular support, nothing - we will all face what's true.

With me possibly being right, we are better off simply facing life honestly now.

How do you have a .7 boy?

Don't fool with Mother Nature.

"If you want to stop the killing of female babies, how about banning elective abortions completely. "

That doesn't stop abortions. In fact the nations with the lowest abortion rates on earth are in very pro-choice Western Europe, with rates even lower than nations where abortion is illegal.

"Unemployed men lounged, drunk, in parks and bus stations. They patrolled the streets and wandered through markets."

How on Earth is this a consequence of selective abortion? Is there a quota system where you have to hire equal numbers of men and women?

If they don't want girls aborted, then they should change their culture so that girls are valued.

Before ultrasounds and "selective" abortions, new born girl babies were taken out in the woods and left to die or brutally murdered.

(And yes, I know, for a lot of you there is no difference between abortion and murder - but that is a discussion for another thread and doesn't change the underlying cause and effect situation.)

The cause is that girls are not valued as highly as boys. The effect is that girls are aborted or killed so that families can have the more highly valued boy children.

Technology has nothing to do with it.

If you want to stop the abortion and/or killing of girls, they must be viewed as having as much value as boys.

Although thanks for using the west as a scapegoat for a problem that has been going on for hundreds of years.....

@Pagan:

Never thought this would happen...

But I agree with you!!

It seems easy to blame abortion for this, but the larger problem is how these cultures value men over women. The problem will only be solved when women are no longer devalued.
This problem will begin to solve itself as men will have a harder time finding a suitable mate and women will, therefore, become more valuable. As more men are left out in the cold, people might rethink things a bit.

VofR:
We really must stop accusing women of using abortion as a method of birth control. Abortion is painful, expensive, time consuming, and emotional. I don't know of one women who enjoys abortion.
I do know of many women who got pregnant because they had sex when they were unprepared. Many times, this unpreparedness results from refusing to entertain the thought that you might have sex in advance. (ie: abstainance pledges / religion)
If abortion turns your stomach (as it does mine), then we must make birth control more accessable. If abortion were accessable in the first weeks of pregnancy, (in cases where birth control fails) embryo termination could make abortion of fetusus much less necessary. Of course, if women are forced to bear the out of pocket cost of abortions (including travel), the fetuses, when they are finally aborted, will simply be more developed. Embryo or fetus. Which would you prefer? I've had two children and seen their sonograms and I'd prefer embryo. I really hope people will think about this more as they encourage insurance companies not to pay and physicians not to provide. When there's one clinic in town and a long wait, abortions take place later.

I currently live in Bangalore on a company rotation. Birth control is illegal here but abortion is not. And I hate to break it to the article, but finding out the gender of an unborn child is illegal in the Indian state where I live; perhaps even the whole country. Yet India still has more men than women, which leads me to believe girl babies are being neglected and thus do not reach adulthood.

It's sad but that is the culture here. Do you know how many times I've seen a gentleman open the door for a lady here? Never. The culture is very focused on the male gender overall. The dowry, technically illegal, is still in practice.

As a father of two, a girl and a boy, this breaks my heart. I love both my children. I can't imagine choosing gender, and I hope that day never comes.

This is a simple matter for me. Let us cease selective abortions. It is wrong - whether you're aborting because you want less children, or children later, or no children, or boy children - it is simply wrong. I do not see these eastern countries as being any more wicked in their practice of abortion than the western countries.

And I like what another said about the world not being over-populated. It isn't and most of the eastern countries would stop abortion all together if resources were shared more equally. I do not believe there would be as dramatic a change in western under the same conditions.

An imbalance of men and women existed in many primitive cultures. The cultures practiced infantcide, creating the imbalance.This did not result in girl children becoming more valuble. The problem was "solved" by raids on neighboring tribes to steal a wife. Not sure if that will become the "solution" again but who knows.

To respond to the comment that "A boy being better than a girl is really an Eastern preconception. Remember, a lot of those countries still have arranged marriages where the parents of the wife must pay a dowry to the family of the husband."

This problem being an "Eastern preconception" is so patently untrue, I must assume that the person who posted this skipped Western European and American history - where the practice of arranged marriages and dowry have a long history that involved capture marriage, rape, and valuing a boy heir over a girl at all times to ensure the succession of title, lands, and wealth.

Many people also incorrectly assume that the women in these countries actually have real choice in the issue of sex selective abortion and infanticide - take some time to read about acid attacks on wives who have girl babies in India, or who are cast off and abandoned with their daughters, or who are pressured by husbands or family to have abortions they do not want.

The problem isn't abortion - it is women and children being treated like commodities, lack of education, and oppressive patriarchal societies.

Very sad world we live in. I hope these countries change there ways, if not they will see the population decrease over the years.

"This author completely contradicts herself in this book. She is pro-choice - she believes abortion should be available to all women, and yet, she wants to ban ultrasounds. Are you kidding me? You don't get it both ways - how do you allow women to have the freedom of choice to kill a child, but not any freedom of choice to see what the child is.

The thing that you need to understand is that the liberals tell you its all about choice, which is a complete lie. It has never been about choice and it will never be about choice, it is about power, plain and simple, liberals want to have the power to control other people. There is nothing more powerful than deciding if a person lives or dies. That is what the liberals love about abortion, the power to decide life or death. It is the ultimate power. The "choice" argument is nothing but a way to hide that ultimate desire to control life or death

One of the cruel ironies of this development, the pro choice movement may end up eradicating the very sex they believed they were championing.