Impact of Sex-Selection

One of the almost unreported consequences of abortion, particularly in the less developed nations of the world, is the significant loss of female babies. The widespread use of ultrasound technology, even in poor nations, has allowed parents to select the sex of their children, deciding who is aborted and who lives. The result? Girl babies are being aborted in record numbers. 

According to a New York Times article by Ross Douthat, "...today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121— though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China’s and India’s populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120."

These figures, bad as they are, relate only to a family's first child. When the birth figures are examined for the family's subsequent children, the results go off the charts. For a third child there are 185 males born for every 100 girls, and for the fourth child, 209 males for every 100 girls. The object is obviously to have sons, for both cultural and economic reasons.

Among the results of all this is the presence in these poor societies of large numbers of young males unable to find young women to marry. They are a disaffected bunch, prone to violence, a societal time-bomb waiting to explode. Equally disturbing are the bidding wars in which scarce young women are treated like chattel and the "poaching" by men from wealthy countries of women from poor countries. 

Yes, it's interesting that what the Church rightly calls an "intrinsically evil act" will inevitably lead to all sorts of evil unintended consequences. [See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Articles 2270-2275.] Equally interesting is the quandary in which the pro-abortion folks find themselves. In his article, Douthat reviews a book  --  Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men -- by Mara Hvistendahl, a pro-abortion feminist who has real difficulty reconciling her belief that the right to abortion is absolute with the massive destruction of girl babies as a result of sex-selective abortions. For those who support abortion, choice is choice and cannot be restricted. And yet in her book Hvistendahl quotes an Indian abortionist who told her, "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.'" How far we have come...

Mara Hvistendahl also claims that worldwide 160 million girls are "missing" as a result of sex-selective abortions. Douthat counters by claiming, "The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re 'missing.' The tragedy is that they’re dead."

For more on this subject, check out the following: The Persistence of Sex-Selective Abortion

Pray for life and for the lives of those unborn baby girls.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." [Jer 1:5]