Zoggie:Also…what are the reprecussions, if a couple is made to bring up a child of the gender that they obviously don’t want? Will they end up unconsciously resenting it, making life even worse for the kid?
Unconsciously? In India, a lot of female children are deliberately neglected or abused (even if they’re not simply exposed, i.e. killed by neglect, as infants): given much less food than their brothers, not given medical care when they’re sick, not educated, etc. etc. In the ruthless calculus of poverty and sexism, they are deprioritized to a point that a lot of them don’t survive.
Caveat: I’m not trying to say that Indian culture is essentially misogynist or abusive. Most Indian fathers absolutely adore their daughters, and from the middle class on up it seems to be quite accepted by most people that girls are to be loved and educated and all that good stuff just as much as boys. But when poverty, ignorance, traditional gender bias, and crushing dowry burdens combine, the result is often not a good outlook for girls.
I’m pro-choice, but this disturbs me. If you abort a statistically significant number of girl fetuses, you’re going to alter the sex ratio for a generation. Even going from a split of 50-50 to 55-45 means that 10 guys out of 55 aren’t going to find a mate. What effect having say 20% of the male population with no prospect of mating would have on a society is anybody’s guess.
Well, even though I consider aborting fetuses’ because of their gender to be morally repugnant, assuming that the woman (couple) in question really, really doesn’t want a girl, and the alternative is having the baby and leaving it to die on the side of the road, I would consider abortion the better option.
It’s a bad situation and the abortion seems like the lesser of two evils.
I see nothing good about it, but I don’t think it should be illegal because that requires doctors (or the law) to pry into women’s lives and decide why they can or can not have an abortion.
While Bricker may be right about the negative impacts of widespread selective abortion in this manner, I’m pretty sure this practice is on the decline in China. Likewise female infanticide, though I’m not sure how common it really ever was. I think the government has relaxed its policies on the issue, although the governments of China and India should probably continue to encourage population control in a responsible manner. (That means not forcing anyone to do anything and not killing anyone, in case I needed to clarify.)
I don’t have a cite for this, so feel free to find one that contradicts me; I don’t mind a bit.
The pro-choice line (which I agree with) is that abortion is the decision of the mother and her physician, period. Abortion for sex-selection is usually the result of the father’s input on the decision. In this country, Daddy’s opinion on the subject carries no legal weight, so unless Mommy’s a total pushover, it simply isn’t a huge concern.
I’ve been hearing about these “Select the sex in advance” kits lately. Actually, I’ve been hearing about these for over twenty years. Either they don’t work very well, or they’re really unpopular. Until the science involved improves, I don’t think these will result in a lopsidedly male America for a couple of generations yet.
Would any of you who think aborting a pregnancy upon discovering the baby would be female if it were for a different reason than simple gender preference, such as if you had a strong family history of a severe genetic defect that affected only girls?
(I have no idea whether there is such a defect, particularly one that is detectable early enough in the pregnancy for abortion still to be a real possibility, but after it’s possible to determine gender.)
Maybe what Indian and Chinese officials should do in areas that are obviously aborting for gender is even things up for them again - come to a town that has a significantly higher ratio of boys, put the names of all the boys into a lottery, and draw names for which boys are to be killed to reduce the ratio to 50-50 again. Sure it sounds harsh, but I don’t think you’d have to do it very often.
Gotta wonder what it’d be like growing up in a household that endorsed the practice. “Son, it’s lucky you were a boy, because we’d have gotten rid of you if you weren’t.”
I don’t know about India, but in China the uneven gender ratio and female infanticide are the result of draconian government policies. I’m not sure addressing it with yet another draconian government policy would be the way to go; it’s like using a second rusty nail to respond to a flat tire.
Aborting a fetus because it was the “wrong” sex used to be done in cases of sex-linked genetic diseases (although the “wrong” sex in those cases was male). The ability to use amniocentesis to determine the sex of a fetus came along before reliable genetic tests for sex-linked disorders such as muscular dystrophy were developed. Couples who knew they were at risk of conceiving an affected child had a tough choice: carry the male fetus to term knowing there was a 50% chance the fetus carried the defect, or abort any male fetuses conceived and only carry female ones to term (knowing that on average half of those aborted male fetuses would be normal).
Now that reliable prenatal testing for many sex-linked diseases can be performed, this nasty situation isn’t seen much any more.
Worse than what? Worse than not being alive at all? I’m pretty sure my father would have preferred to have a son, and certainly I have the usual psychological scars, but you know, I can’t honestly say I would rather not exist.