Hundreds of millions of girls gone?

Speaking of an increasingly serious abortion for sex selection in many countries, author Mara Hvistendahl wrote a long article in US Foreign Policy magazine.

We would like to introduce this article:

How did more than 160 million women disappear from Asia? The answer is simple: sex selection. Ultrasound swept through, resulting in abortion if the fetus is female. But more than that, many reasons for a gap equal to half of the US population are not clearly recognized.

And when I started researching a book for the subject, I didn't get it myself.

I intend to focus on " how people still take gender discrimination in parallel with national development ". There are many reasons parents want a son: Boys stay at home and take care of their parents when they get old, or they perform funeral rites and worship ancestors in some cultures. Or girls are an expensive and dowry burden.

However, that does not explain why sex selection stretches across cultures and religions. Only once in Southeast Asia, the rate of sex imbalance at birth has recently spread to places like Vietnam, Albania or Azerbaijan. The problem spreads across these countries, moreover at a time when women are operating many developed economies.

Woman: the problem is painful

In India, where women gain their first political rights while the US is not yet available, gender selection has become so painful that it is estimated that by 2020 there will be 15-20% of men in the west. north of this country lacks women. I can only explain that epidemic as a cruel corollary of both scientific progress and raging gender discrimination. I don't think the sex selection story will spread to the United States even partially.

I then looked at it and discovered that what I thought - that was the scheming hypothesis of the left-wing side of the relationship between Western feminist theory and population regulation - indeed has a chance. some real life. And so, Western advisors and researchers, along with Western currencies, have contributed to a serious decline in the number of women and girls in the developing world.

And today, feminist advocates and fertility advocacy groups are still reeling from that consequence.

The story begins in the mid-20th century, when a number of factors make Western demographers concerned about population growth. Thanks to advances in public health care, people have lived longer than before. The UN Population Division projects have shown what life will look like in those boom years: Rapid population growth is imminent, especially in the developed world.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation are among the organizations that poured money into limiting birth rates everywhere and the International Family Planning Association (IPPF) with the Association. The Population has helped to coordinate efforts.

Abortion abruptly

One of the barriers that prevent contraceptives, according to the study, is that in most countries, people continue to lay down until there is a son. As the demographer SN Agarwala explained at the 1963 IPPF conference in Singapore: " Some religious rituals, especially the rituals related to the death of parents are only done by boys . These The one who gives birth to a girl is trying her best to get a son . " Even in the United States, general research also shows favor for boys.

That situation raises the question: What if couples give birth to their first son? Elsewhere, scientists are trying to improve sex determination tests for women with sex disorders, such as hysteria that only occur in men. The first sex-selective abortion performed in 1955 by a Danish doctor in Copenhagen succeeded in giving women male births. But technology is only early in life and still requires abortion when the fetus is large. At the same time, those who propose to regulate population begin to discuss the adjustment of sex selection.

In South Korea, the Western currency allows the production of mobile clinics - USID-funded US military ambulances and by trained and unskilled workers and lovers. volunteer. The Ministry of Health's Community Health Department hires farm workers and pays them based on the number of people they bring to sterilize and place rounds. And some people believe that the Korean mobile clinic later became an abortion point.

The physiologist Cho Young youl recalled back in the 1970s, when he was still a medical student: " There are employees who go around the countryside to small towns and bring women to the mobile clinic. They also count on their salaries, they bring women regardless if they are pregnant . " Non-pregnant women are sterilized. A pregnant woman had a worse fate, Cho said: "The staff will arrest her for abortion and tubal ligation."

When the rate of abortion in Korea increased dramatically, Sung-bong Hong and Christopher Tietze concretized this increase in the population council magazine Research on Family Planning. By 1977, they determined doctors in Seoul were carrying 2.75 abortions for each birth - the highest abortion rates were recorded in human history.

Recently, Korean sociologist Heeran Chun told me: " I don't think sex-selective abortion has become so common."