Sunday, June 19, 2011

"This is where choice leads."

"Pro-choice" has, of course, always meant the elimination of the possibility of any choice, ever, for the unborn. A new book makes clear that in many cultures "pro-choice" is also anti-woman. Jonathan Last reviewing Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl:
.... In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet 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.

What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence. ....

...[I]f "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "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.'"

This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. .... [more]
Book Review: Unnatural Selection - WSJ.com

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:49 PM

    So Liberation leads to death

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are things we are not free to choose. Among them is killing the innocent - thereby depriving them of life and liberty.

    ReplyDelete

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