According to many who advocate abortion, the fetus is not human. So how can anyone tell if it is a human boy or girl?

I guess logic does not play much part in the debate regards abortion.

Feminist lies, misinformation, suppression of information, and money all play a part in the debate regards abortion, but not logic.

Joseph Chamie successfully exposes the bind that the pro-choice lobby finds itself in. The fundamental catch-cry of the pro-choicers over the decades has been for the right to absolute "freedom of choice."

Those who have dared speak up for the life of the unborn child have been demonised for doing so because respecting the child means placing restrictions on CHOICE! And that cannot never be allowed.

At the moment Victoria could be about to remove all legal resctrictions on abortion. The ACT has already done so. No, being allowed to kill the child in the womb right up to full term, for any reason whatsoever, is an absolute essential in order for women to lead a happy life - at least in the minds of many.

But now the very serious problems of gender imbalance due to selective abortion are becoming more and more apparent. Probably prochoicers in the west won't care too much though as that problem is largely "over there" and hopefully won't directly affect us too much.

In the end. if female babies are going to be disproportionately killed by abortion, that (rather paradoxically for the feminist movement) is just too bad, because the choice to be able to kill the unborn must be absolute!!

The issue about gender selection is a different and separate issue to the one of a woman’s right to choose.

Whilst we, with western values, might consider gender selection repugnant and an invalid justification for abortion, this does not undermine a woman’s fundamental right to choose how her body will be used.

To deny a woman the right to choose on the basis she might use that right to select the gender of her child is to inflict an arbitrary restriction upon those who might not be seeking to make a gender choice.

As for the conduct of Indian and Chinese peasants, if I were female, I would not expect my expectations to be constrained by the practices of peasants.

It is a weak argument which does not stand for much. I am concerned that flawed minds like this hold positions of authority in UN. The UN needs people who are more open and understanding, not constrained and desirous to impose their own prejudices upon people in an arrogant attempt to control their morality.

As for “gender imbalance”, be it on a local or worldly level and the comments of GP

People are individuals with a responsibility to themselves, the balance of world gender populations will resolve itself over time but the life of the individual may be irreparably damaged by your attempt to assert you own prerogative over what is someone else’s body and choice.

Life is about individuals, the world and wider social groups are only statistical collections, the quality of which is only ever measured in the quality of the individual life.

“Life quality” is about individuals determining their own destiny, not being strapped to the one you would inflict upon them.

"A woman’s right to choose gives way to sex-selection abortions and dangerous gender imbalances."

What ever gave you that idea? I think you're confusing abortion with IVF.

Joseph Chamie, in the guise of former United Nations population expert, is still trying to control women's bodies. He is now in the Migration Policy Institute with other people with clearly Irish Catholic names.

Indian and Chinese families prefer to rear boys rather than girls because in China the wife of the eldest son cares for the parents in their dotage. In India the practice of bride's providing a dowry, although illegal, has gained popularity since 1948. Now that marriageable women are in short supply you would expect that the value of women will rise, and Indian and Chinese society will adjust their customs to the new reality. Presumably single Chinese and Indian men will cope with the shortage of women the same way single white men did in frontier society in the 1890s.

Billie,
How do you account for Japan (and a number of other countries), where there is a lower number of boys being born than girls.

See graph in article.

Would this imbalance have to do with someone controlling women’s bodies, such as a feminist.

Going by the evidence of the graphs there is one easy solution: - an all-out campaign to encourage miscegenation! Gender imbalance and world peace all wrapped up in one tidy package!

*According to many who advocate abortion, the fetus is not human.*

Of course its human, your argument sounds like a strawman, but
its neither a child, nor a person, as claimed by the religious
brigade.

If everyone is selecting for boys, then others will soon twig
that their daughters will thrive and do well, with all that
selection to pick and choose from, out there.

If the parents of the bloggers here were as cold hearted as yourselves it is unlikely any of you would of had to opportunity to voice an opinion. I am glad my parents did not murder me although no doubt some will disagree.

Joseph Chamie paints the gender imbalance as a bad thing, but I don't think the Chinese would see it that way. The whole point of the one child policy was to eliminate population growth. It hasn't done achieved that goal, but it may yet succeed.

Unlike every other country Chine saw the writing on the wall long before they became a net food importer, and did something about it. China had around 550 million people in 1950. Now they have 1.3 billion while usable farm land has dropped by 25%. They have recently become a net food importer, whereas before they were a net exporter. Population is projected to continue increasing for a while. Food output is likely to continue dropping in the face of the retreating Himalayan snow caps, unless technology comes to the rescue.

Lets hope it does. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am cheering them on like crazy to pull it off - become self sufficient in food that is. If they don't the consequences are likely to be very unpleasant, and not only for just the Chinese. If they need food and can't buy it, I suspect they, like every other population in history, will resort to any means required to get it.

In the mean time the current sex ratio, no matter how achieved, is a bonus. Men don't produce kids, women do. The longer the current ratio is maintained the better off they will be in the future. I am sure they are well aware of that.

LOL

I seem to recall posting something similar a few months ago. I'm flattered that Yale has caught up with me.

This is, of course, only the beginning. As techniques for genetic screening improve many foetuses with what parents regard as undesirable traits will be aborted.

Example. There is no such thing as an "intelligence gene." But we may be able to detect genomes – COMBINATIONS of genes – that incline a person to being a bit dim. Would it be right to abort the "perhaps stupid?"

How about aborting foetuses that are "perhaps gay?" Some religions believe in the death penalty for homosexuality so they may be comfortable aborting a perhaps gay foetus even if opposed to abortion in other cases.

You can, of course, legislate all you like. Enforcing such legislation while preserving a woman's freedom to choose is likely to prove a challenge.

I don't think this is about a woman's right to choose, as some might. For what is happening here is a patriarchal custom playing judge, jury and executioner. Sex-selective abortion should be criminalized, whilst still protecting women's rights.

"As techniques for genetic screening improve many foetuses with what parents regard as undesirable traits will be aborted". I hope steven1meyer's prediction doesn't come true. At the moment, I can not think of any situation where social engineering is acceptable. We forget that bringing a life into this world is a singular occurance. In other words, IT can not be re-produced.

Haralambos writes:

"Sex-selective abortion should be criminalized, whilst still protecting women's rights."

It is not at all clear how you would do this. A woman says "I want an abortion." She does not have to give a reason. It may be because the foetus is of the "wrong" sex or it may be because she does not want a baby for now. How can you tell?

IN a practical sense, how would you achieve your goal of criminalising sex-selective abortion while protecting a woman's right to have an abortion Haralambos?

Note that we already abort foetuses with undesirable traits such as Down's syndrome, Klinefelter's syndrome and Tay Sachs disease. That's the limit of what our genetic screening can do for now.

But if we get to the point where we can detect a tendency towards mental dimness or homosexuality in utero do you really think you could stop parents aborting?

I think this is something we're going to have to learn to live with. Either that or restrict abortions.

Spot on Steven

I wrote something on this recently for uni actually.. in the course of researching it, I came across a product called "Pink or Blue".. which is a commercially available test which can be bought over the internet and accurately determines the sex of the fetus at 7 weeks gestation.

So the technology is already there and steven is 100% correct, while I (although I note not everyone on this thread) find the idea of sex-selective termination morally repugnant, the reality of the ready availability of termination is that it doesn't really matter what the reason is, as no "reason" is needed. The choice need not be justified.

While I find the laissez faire/uber libertarian (as long as you don't happen to be a fetus that is!) attitude of some posters here quite offensive, at least they are consistent I suppose. On that point, I suspect that wider society would not concur and would draw the line at terminating "wrong" sex fetuses.

The woman's right to choose is absolute at present

I can imagine that women in these countries want to rescue their daughters from having to be born in a country where baby girls are the victims of infanticide, or are dumped in orphanages, where girls, when ill, are neglected and left to die. There are far worse things than never to be born. Females who have made it to adolescence are married and will be on the beg and call of the mother-in-law as some kind of slave. The women who have a job are paid significantly lower wages than the males do, for the same work.
I wonder whether the governments are more concerned about the effect the imbalance of the sexes will have on men than they are about the fact that women are undervalued.

What are we more concerned about?
Are we making this into a men’s issue- oh dear, we have aborted so many female foetuses and killed so many girls that many of our men won’t be able to find a partner! Perhaps our men, without a wife or sisters, will even have to care for their own parents, how disastrous would that be?
Perhaps employers won’t be able to find enough workers to underpay.

Or are we more concerned about the fact that the women are undervalued and have been treated like second-rate citizens, like crap?
If these abortions didn’t affect men at all, would anyone bother to care?

Reducing sex selective abortion by measures such as prohibition and by preventing that prospective parents find out the fetus’s sex is merely an attempt to reduce the symptoms of a dysfunctional society and is not a cure for it.
Will infanticide increase when sex-selective abortion is denied?

Continued

The most important issue to deal with is that there is a real problem of inequality between males and females.
That female fetuses are being aborted far more than male fetuses is not something that needs more attention than the real problem does- inequality itself needs to be focused on and then the symptoms will solve itself.

We also need to be aware that poor countries like these receive no or very little aid that goes towards women’s rights. What can be done to improve situations for girls and to empower women? Developed nations, like the EU, are stuck with conservative countries like Ireland and Malta that are not willing to stress the importance of sexually educating and offering contraception to young people, esp. girls in these countries.

Work on sex equality and the sex imbalance problem will sort itself out.

Social engineering is being carried out through IVF, where a woman can select genetic traits from a male depending on what is written on a piece of paper. The woman need not ever meet the male.

The kits for determining the sex of the child have been available for some years, and it might not be long before a woman can legally take certain chemicals to induce an abortion without even contacting a doctor.

I have heard of no opposition to any of this from the feminist movement, and none of it is natural.

Next feminists will be saying that they believe in mother nature.

The horrible unspoken taboo in this practice is that... the current social order makes the responsibility of females more work.

Its the daddy conspiracy, as many quite rightly point out.

Sorry, but this article conflates two arguments into one. This paper would get a big fat Fail in any undergruadute course at a University.

There is absolutely no 'abortion bind' between supporting legal abortion and condemning abortion for reasons of gender. They are two entirely separate issues. Throwing in that red herring did not fool many posters.

The societies mentioned, India and China, can be accused of many things, but not of being run by those championing the rights of women to make any choice. On the contrary.

These women are being forced by their societies, especially their husbands, to make these choices. Females are seen as less worthy than males. Previously, and still to this day, girl babies were deliberately killed, left to die, or dropped off at an orphanage. Abortion is just one more method of doing away with a worthless female.

That societies like this still exist demonstrates that the work and education by feminists is not over for a long time yet.

The only plus, if there is one, is that the value of women, because of their scarcity could actually go sky-high, which means that women (or their parents) can afford to be extremely choosy when selecting a husband.

A bit of a back fire really for these patriarchal societies. In a televised investigation I noted that choosy and financially independent young women in China are not willing to settle down with just any male.

Yvoone,
It didn’t take long. As a feminist you would have been trained to think “choice” (for the woman), but saying that having more baby girls killed than baby boys is acceptable, because it gives women more choice in who to marry, is probably the most repulsive and degenerate thing I have heard a feminist say in some time.

It seems that feminists regard unborn babies as worthless if they are to be aborted, but not worthless if they are unborn baby girls.

I’m still waiting for a feminist to mention the difference in life expectancy between males and females in India, and almost every other country.

Yvonne said:

"There is absolutely no 'abortion bind' between supporting legal abortion and condemning abortion for reasons of gender. They are two entirely separate issues. Throwing in that red herring did not fool many posters."

Since you appear to have misunderstood the premise of the article, let me explain it again. You are to right to say that they are two different things, the author say that himself. The point though, as has been made ad nauseam already on this thread already by myself and others, is that if your position is that the woman's right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy is absolute (as per Australia, 2008), then it makes ABSOLUTELY no difference, in practical terms, what the reason for a termination is.

Hence, whilst most of us agree that sex-selective termination is reprehensible (not all on this thread), the point is that under current arrangements, it is irrelevant. You don't NEED a reason.

He doesn't conflate two arguments at all - he says that holding one view leads to an inevitable consequence - sex-selective abortion. Read what he said for heaven's sake, there is every reason to believe he is pro-choice himself:

"On one hand, they support a woman’s right to choose to have a safe and legal induced abortion. On the other, they oppose sex-selective abortion, which in most instances discriminates against female fetuses and produces socially adverse gender imbalances."

It is instructive that you have managed to infer that through your obviously hard-line feminist perspective. He is merely saying that sex-selective termination is an unfortunate consequence of current policy.

Get it? Your knee-jerk analysis gets a big fat F.

HRS and Stickman, may I respectfully suggest that both of you read the article again.

Why do you think women would want to abort a female, but happily go through with a pregnancy when she is having a male baby? Hatred of her own gender, fear of giving birth to a feminist?

Just get over your own silly opinions of feminism in general and ask why would a woman not want to give birth to a girl, but prefers a boy.

Throwing feminism into this debate is another silly, silly and useless point.

This article, if it was to be of any worth should have stuck to what is at the heart of the matter: female infanticide.

Whether through abortion, dropping her into the gutter, smothering her or any of the many ways that female babies are done away with.

The author is not remotely concerned with female infanticide. The title of his article is: The Global Abortion Bind. He is blaming the access to safe abortion with the male/female ratios being out of wack.

The author is not at all concerned with the fact that women are pressured to abort female babies.

The author couldn't care less about girl babies or women's conditions in these countries. So get off your high horses as if there was any concern expressed. He waffles on about ABORTION.

"fear of giving birth to a feminist?" Ohhh funny, Yvonne :)

Stickman, “You don't NEED a reason. ”
You got that part right. These women have no real choice because they are very strongly influenced by their misogynist environment and ‘choosing’ to give birth to a girl has a very negative effect on their and their daughters' lives.

If we just put the abortion part of this debate aside for a moment, to show those-who-still-don’t-get-it, that there ARE two separate issues here, and make this about gender choice only.

Imagine that men would have the choice to determine the sex of a fetus by taking a pink pill that would stimulate x sperm production only and so a girl would be created, or a blue pill that would stimulate y sperm production only and a boy would be created.

Men would have a real and fair choice in a world where men and women were valued equally. They probably wouldn’t care much about the sex of their child and would let nature take its cause. Or perhaps there would be a handful of men who would swallow a blue pill if they already fathered 2 girls and would like a son, or vice versa.

But now imagine that these pills existed in a society where boys had no value, and many were killed straight after birth, perhaps dropped in a pan of boiling water, or left in the hot sun to die, or neglected when sick. He’d be just an extra mouth to feed, he wouldn’t be educated and would, in the end, impoverish his family especially since his family would have to come up with a big dowry for the bride’s family.
Would you say that these men have a real choice in determining the sex of their offspring? Wouldn’t they prefer the sex of their child to be female? The blue pill would become a bitter pill to swallow.
Would they need to justify or find a reason for their choice of the pink pill?

Isn’t that reason obvious already?

Yvoone,
Saying that there can (or should) be rampant abortion, as long as there is not infanticide, is like saying that people can drive recklessly down the road, as long as they wear a seat belt.

The article is on infanticide and abortion, and I would have thought that infanticide and abortion are connected. It is difficult to have infanticide without abortion. Abortion is very important for feminists, similar to divorce, abduction of children from fathers, distortion of information, lying, denigration of males, living of the taxpayer, and artificial reproduction.

Celiva,
I have noted the huge outcry from feminists over the fact that fewer boys are being born in time. This appears to be happening world wide, and feminists all across the world have been calling on governments to investigate why. The noise has been deafening (like not).

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1412472/declining_male_birth_rate_baffles_scientists/index.html

It is also interesting that certain drugs taken during feminist supported IVF lead to more baby girls than boys. Feminists all across the world have been very concerned about this also (like not).

How amazing! Some men at a globalisation institute have noticed that sex-selection abortion leads to fewer girl babies. Feminist reproductive rights activists have been commenting on the issues for years. At any feminist conference the delegates from India discuss the complexities of the issue.

I have to say, the problem is not abortion nor medical technology. The problem is a continuing cultural preference for male children, a preference that used to require women to have how ever many babies it took to have a boy, now technology enables that requirement to be circumvented. Of course, the pregnant women may be in a bind - wanting a daughter but pressured to have a son. What the research doesn't say is how many women would personally call pregnancy and birth quits after a couple of girls if only there wasn't the pressure.

It strikes me that this is a challenge for all the hand wringing men. Have a go at being cultural change agents. Daughters are great. Moreover, better social supports in society would mean that offspring of either sex could look after old parents. Feminists are not to blame for the preference for boy babies described here. Go on, men, have a go at breaking down masculinism.

Should be a great campaign - lots of feminists will help once the men get it going - give it a go!

peony

Hi Peony,
Yes it is quite amazing that they finally noticed- but not until they became concerned about the shortage of brides to bring them sons and a fat dowry for their families. Marriage of sons fatten up the parents’ wallets, marriage of daughters is very costly. For parents, it’s worth spending money on their sons, on their education and well being, because the woman he marries will return all the costs to them.
Even though dowries have been banned, these laws haven’t been enforced so nothing has changed.
Women are not allowed any possessions like property or real estate- only sons will inherit from their fathers.

It’s a very complex issue that misogynists like HRS and Stickman deliberately trivialise, and treat the issue as if the women make these choices out of free will and then spin it into a men’s issue.

HRS “It is difficult to have infanticide without abortion.”
It is impossible to have infanticide without an infant. Are you confusing foeticide with infanticide?

Great article, HRS
The article states that globally the rate of boys being born is declining most likely due to causes such as pollution and stress. The fact that there is a naturally occurring drop in the birthrate of boys makes the point of female foeticide even more alarming; if the rate of boy births had remained stable, the discrepancy between the number of birth rates of boys and girls would have been even greater!

You don’t seem the slightest bit concerned about the difficult situation the women in these countries are in.
The whole point is that women are not valued, have a very low status, can improve their status somewhat by having sons and will reduce their status by having daughters.

BTW, IVF doesn't reduce the birth of boys, without IVF there would be no baby at all.

Rasil Basu, director of ‘Vanishing Daughters’ said, “Empowerment of women is the only answer.”

And Indian Dr Amrit Sethi, summed the situation up like this: “The day grooms become available without a hefty price tag attached to them, female foeticide will end.”

Great posts Celivia and Peony.

HRS: <Saying that there can (or should) be rampant abortion, as long as there is not infanticide, is like saying that people can drive recklessly down the road, as long as they wear a seat belt.>

Who says that? Who has ever said there should be ‘rampant’ abortion? Perhaps the male government of China, but not a woman. Men maybe, but not a woman.

Having an abortion brings risks, fewer than a pregnancy, but it has risks nevertheless, like every single surgical procedure. Only a person who hates women would advocate abortion as a first choice for contraception.

There are some of you who read the word ‘abortion’ and start foaming at the mouth. It makes it impossible for you to remain even slightly rational or logical and look at what is the real problem. I find that curious, especially if you are so against abortion.

You are not at all interested in saving foetuses, you don’t give a toss about foetuses, babies or children. You don’t even pretend you do. It is control over women you want. Uterus envy plain and simple. That women could have any power at all rankles deeply with some men.

The only issue in this debate is why are male infants valued and female infants not. This should concern those opposed to abortion and those in favour of choice. So, if you want to add to the discussion get off your anti-abortion-hate-those-women hobby horse. With so many women hating men about it is becoming clearer why a woman might want to spare a daughter that.

My comment about the value of women increasing because of a shortage of female births links directly to this. It should appeal to the male psyche. It is pure economics, capitalism in it's purest form, so beloved by the far right.

Celivia,
As an aware and loving feminist, I’m surprised you didn’t know that the rate of boys being born is declining in countries across the world.

As an aware and loving feminist, I’m surprised you didn’t know that the drugs women take during IVF often result in more baby girls being born than boys.

As an aware a loving feminist, I’m surprised that you call people misogynist, when you have no proof of misogyny (or perhaps feminists are simply trained in universities to call anyone else a misogynist).

Unregulated abortion leads to many problems, and I’m sure feminists would be aware of this when calling for more unregulated abortion. But I think a more urgent problem in India would be the huge number of orphaned and abandoned children (estimated 2 million). This is something I’m sure loving feminists would be aware of, but loving feminists still keep pressing for IVF in countries such as Australia (to be paid for by the taxpayer of course), instead of adoption of orphaned and abandoned children.

http://infochangeindia.org/20060307241/Children/Features/India-is-home-to-the-largest-number-of-AIDS-orphans-in-the-world.html

Feminism = abortion, divorce, abduction of children from fathers, denigration of males, calling other people misogynist, dissemination of misinformation, living off the taxpayer, and of course artificial reproduction.

Yvoone,
More boys might be born in India than girls, but what do you think of the situation where the number of boys being born worldwide is decreasing compared to girls. As another aware and loving feminist, do you think this is a good thing or not?

HRS your true colours are showing, Just because you had a bitter divorce and have no or restricted access to your children that is no reason to refuse women the right to terminate unwanted babies. It's immaterial whether the baby is not wanted because the mother can't care for the child, or can't feed another child, doesn't want a girl or the baby is deformed.

HRS,
You seem to be surprised a lot. Perhaps you’ll also find it surprising that your arguments about abortion and feminism are moot because abortion rates are much lower in countries where women have more equal rights than in countries where women have very little or no rights.

Countries with the most liberal abortion laws happen to have the lowest abortion rates in the world.

And do you know WHY abortion rates are so low in those countries?
Guess what- even though women have easy access to abortion, they do not need the service much at all.
Why not?
Because women prefer to avoid abortions.
Because women know that abortion involves risk.
Because women have better options.
Because women are educated about sex & drugs & birth control.
Because women have easy access to contraception.

So it is not easy access to abortion that leads to problems; it is lack of education and equal rights for women that is the real problem.

You have hijacked the word feminism.
A proper definition of feminism: “The principle that women should have political, economic and social rights equal to those of men.”
There, there, does that sound so bad?

Why I called you a misogynist?
If you are not a supporter of feminism then I can only conclude that you are a misogynist- why else would you want to deny women equal rights?

There is one thing I do agree with, which is that there should be more encouragement for people to adopt a child. The difficulty is often the long and draining adoption process. The process should be quicker and more efficient. My neighbour had been trying to adopt a child for years, put on some weight in the meantime and then was told that she needs to lose weight before she can be reconsidered.

Now, I am really interested to read your thoughts on the actual topic, if you can manage to put aside your anger over your past relationship, uterus envy or whatever it is that bothers you.

I see that Timkins is off his medication again.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=6333

Celivia,
The problem regards the increased rate of abortions of baby girls in some areas of India could be easily solved by restricting the number of times that a woman is told that their unborn child is a boy or a girl.

The problem of the decreasing rate that boys are being born world wide is much more difficult to solve, which is possibly the reason why feminists don’t mention it much, or they consider baby boys to have no value anyway.

The definition of feminism is meaningless unless it is be carried out, but unfortunately there is minimal evidence to suggest that feminists do consider females equal to males, and not more equal than equal.

There is no equality in feminism, and most other “isms”.

In some countries, if you don’t call yourself an “ist”, (such as a communist or an Islamist) then you can be imprisoned, beaten, and even executed. Many aware and loving feminists carry out a form of this, by calling someone a misogynist if they don’t call themselves a feminist.

Aware and loving feminists such as yourself should live in a country where it is compulsory for people to call themselves an “ist”, to see what it is like.

In a number of Asian countries, abortion is routinely carried out as a form of contraception, with no other forms of contraception being used. I have heard of no opposition to this from aware and loving feminists.

It is also being thought that the relatively high number of abortions occurring in Australia is because of the high number of abortions being carried out on Asian immigrant women in city areas, who are using no forms of contraception. Again I have heard of no opposition to this from aware and loving feminists.

What is the problem with choosing abortion as the preferred method of contraception? It doesn't conform to European Christian values but who is to say that those values are immutably right.

What does it matter if there are a declining number of boys, after all you only need one sperm donor to artificially inseminate thousands of women. farmers have been doing it in animal husbandry for centuries without any ill effects.

HRS “I would have thought that infanticide and abortion are connected.”

I think not.

Abortion is a decision based on one set of parameters (woman does not want to be pregnant), the infanticide being discussed in the article is a decision based on entirely different parameters (female child is not the desired result).

“It is difficult to have infanticide without abortion.”

Actually quite the opposite is really true. More abortions would result in fewer infanticides and fewer abortions likely to produce greater incidence of infanticide.

“Abortion is very important for feminists, similar to divorce, abduction of children from fathers, distortion of information, lying, denigration of males, living of the taxpayer, and artificial reproduction.”

I am the divorced father of two daughters. Abortion is very important to me.

Not because I have ever or will ever need one but because I demand sovereignty over my own body and believe in gender equality so extend sovereignty to every other person, regardless of gender.

As to the suggestion “The problem regards the increased rate of abortions of baby girls in some areas of India could be easily solved by restricting the number of times that a woman is told that their unborn child is a boy or a girl.”

And increase the number of infanticides.

However, the conduct of Indian peasants is a matter for Indian peasants to live with, doubtless better access to cheaper contraception would help a lot, fewer abortions, fewer infanticides. I do recall some time ago there was a massive wave of vasectomies being conducted in India.

As one who has had a vasectomy, I can assure you it is a simple and effective method of avoiding the need for both abortion and infanticide.

HRS,
In your first post you said, “… misinformation, suppression of information… play a part in the debate regards abortion...”
In your last post, you said, “… restricting the number of times that a woman is told that their unborn child is a boy or a girl.”
Hmmmm, I thought you had a problem with misinformation and suppression of information.

Besides, you are STILL missing the point even though Yvonne spelled it out so clearly, “The only issue in this debate is why are male infants valued and female infants not.”
Withholding this info from women serves a dysfunctional society and is not a cure for it.
And as Col and I both pointed out, more abortions result in fewer infanticides. There can be no infanticide without infants.

If both sexes were equally valued, women wouldn’t be pressured into aborting girl foetuses and people would not kill girls.

Billy,
“What is the problem with choosing abortion as the preferred method of contraception?”
Abortions are more of a health risk than proper methods of contraception, especially a whole series of abortions. It is also far more costly.
The best long-term form of contraception would be, as Col pointed out, a vasectomy/sterilisation. Much less risky than a series of abortions. My husband had a vasectomy also, after the birth of our two children. Before that I used a combination of IUD and the pill, to make sure. I would find it very hard, emotionally, to have an abortion. Too many people look at abortion only from a clinical perspective, but for pregnant women it can really put a strain on their emotions.
For me, an unwanted pregnancy would have forced me to make an almost impossible decision- whether to carry a pregnancy full term or terminate it.

That’s why I think it is very important that all women have easy access to safe and affordable birth control.
I deeply feel for the women who are not free to make their own decisions, like those women in India.
Abortion is almost never an isolated decision.

Well said Celivia and ColRouge.

Billie, as Celivia pointed out re abortion not being an ideal method for contraception is that an abortion remains a surgical procedure. There are risks attached to this. Less than with a pregnancy, but much more than with other forms of contraception. That is why it quite criminal that there is such resistance to RU486. The safest way for an abortion.

HRS: why are you linking emotional and unsubstantiated commentary on a wide range of issues negatively with feminism? As to your silly opinion on ists. What about monarchists, capitalists, evangelists, theists, nationalists, to name but a few, are those OK ists? Can I stay in Australia and be safe?

Generally the birth rate for boys has always been slightly higher than for girls. There are a few theories why this is so, one being that boys are the 'weaker sex' and not as likely to survive adverse conditions as are girls.

Why this is changing is not clear. Factors that are considered to give an explanation for this range from environmental pollution to the fact that nowadays boys are no more likely to die than are girls.

HRS: Feminists are not a separate mono-issue species. Some feminists call themselves Christians, or atheists, or environmentalists, or republicans, or monarchists, etc. etc, as well.

Women, who call themselves feminists are generally interested in a wide range of things, not only women's issues; from the political to cultural. As human beings.

Either the higher birth rates of boys in China and India reflect less stressful or polluted environments there, or they are aborting girls and we in the west are aborting boys.

Could we perhaps solve both respective imbalances by exporting some of our surplus feminists.

Billie (another aware and loving feminist),

It doesn’t take long before the real face of feminism comes shining through.

“What does it matter if there are a declining number of boys, after all you only need one sperm donor to artificially inseminate thousands of women. farmers have been doing it in animal husbandry for centuries without any ill effects”.

It appears that you have an objection to more girls being aborted than boys in India, but have no objection to using one male to artificially inseminate thousands of women, like they were some type of farmyard animal.

I suppose you will be trying to excuse yourself by saying that you are a radical feminist, but I think not.

I believe my previous summation of feminism remains correct and accurate.

Feminism = abortion, divorce, abduction of children from fathers, denigration of males, calling other people misogynist, dissemination of misinformation, living off the taxpayer, and of course artificial reproduction.

Col Ruge,
It is true that many vasectomies are carried out in India, but I’ve never heard a feminist mention this. It is also true that the rate of vasectomy and sterilization of Australian men is one of the highest in the western world, while the rate of sterilization of Australian women is one of the lowest in the western world. I’ve never heard a feminist mention this either.

I wonder why?

Yvoone,
In a natural state, a woman would not know if her unborn is male or female, so why would a feminist object to a woman not knowing if her unborn is male or female (with feminists believing in mother nature and all that).

Seeker,
I have always thought that feminism is the greatest contraceptive ever invented. With a population of 2 billion, perhaps Australia could develop an export industry, and export feminism to India. It could be similar to uranium. We export it, but don’t use it here.

Timkins: << I have always thought that feminism is the greatest contraceptive ever invented. With a population of 2 billion, perhaps Australia could develop an export industry, and export feminism to India. >>

What's that saying about giving a chimpanzee a typwriter?

At the tail end of yet another of his idiotic rants, HRSkins inadvertently said something sensible! Yes, in those places where women's status approaches that of men, the birthrate tends to decline and the use of contraception increases.

Undoubtedly, if all women in India were educated - including exposure to feminist ideas - the use of contraception would increase markedly and the birthrate would decline as it has in the West. Now, how about proliferating such 'feminist' ideas throughout the rest of the developing world...

Correct CJ MORGAN

Feminism is a most effective contraceptive.

So, it turns out, is electrification. For but ONE example see:

http://www.popline.org/docs/0336/790380.html

For more examples google with the three words: electrification birth rate

Between electrification and feminism we could probably halve the world's population in a century.

HRS,
“…have no objection to using one male to artificially inseminate thousands of women…”
Perhaps some women won’t, but I would object. Don’t assume that all feminists are misandrists. I know many women who generally like men, find many men wonderful, and think it’s important for children to have a bond with their fathers. The world would be worse off without men, without fathers. Not all feminists hate men! They have respect for men and in turn they like to be respected and liked, too.

Feminism does not, by definition, reject men.
My daughter should the same rights and opportunities as my son, and vice versa.
The things that I don’t want for my family and myself are the same things I don’t want for others, like for the women in India.
I just don’t understand why you, Seeker and Stickman have no problem with the way these women are being treated. If you have a daughter, a sister, a mother, a grandmother that you love, would you want her to be treated the way Indian women and girls are being treated?

About sterilisation/vasectomies, I only can say that a vasectomy is a much simpler, quicker and cheaper option than sterilisation. It only involves local anesthetics and takes very little time. Besides, most women whose husbands have had a vasectomy have been through childbirths, perhaps an abortion or miscarriages and many years of taking care of contraception, so for most couples it’s reasonable that the male partner takes care of the long-term contraceptive part.
You sound like you want feminists to hand out medals to men who had vasectomies- vasectomies benefit men too, if they don’t want to father more children.

Sorry for the delay, been busy trying to pass exams.

Celivia defined feminism as: "The principle that women should have political, economic and social rights equal to those of men."

Absolutely. And to the extent that I used the word feminism in a pejorative sense, I apologise.

Billie - your comment about abortion being an acceptable method of contraception is one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen on these boards, and that is saying something. Thanks Celivia for setting that straight.

Celivia, I think your characterising me as misogynist would surprise the women in my life, and I am not quite sure how you got to that conclusion, if for the above ill-thought out use of the word feminism then fair enough, but if for any other reason then I am mighty confused. All I have done in this thread is agree with the author's premise that an inevitable and (in my view) sad, consequence of "no questions asked" access to abortion is sex-based termination. Unlike Billie and others on this thread, I do find that disturbing and I don't resile from it. For those of you unperturbed by sex-based termination, I question your moral compass.

Having said the above, I of course recognise the implications of restricting access to termination: backyard jobs, septic uteruses and death. So, like most people, I support therapeutic termination on a benefit vs. harm basis

(cont)
What the author is saying, and I agree, is that free access to abortion has downsides, and his article focuses on one. He never says that abortion should be banned, he just recognises the complexity of the issue. He acknowledges the perspective of those who argue that the focus should be on altering cultural attitudes in China and India so girls are not devalued. And obviously, I agree with that too.

So where I am struggling is trying to understand why some of you are so hot under the collar about the article? What is so wrong with the premise? He is really just stating the obvious isn't he?

Yvonne said:

"There are some of you who read the word ‘abortion’ and start foaming at the mouth. It makes it impossible for you to remain even slightly rational or logical and look at what is the real problem. I find that curious, especially if you are so against abortion.

You are not at all interested in saving foetuses, you don’t give a toss about foetuses, babies or children. You don’t even pretend you do. It is control over women you want. Uterus envy plain and simple. That women could have any power at all rankles deeply with some men."

Yvonne, I hope you aren't referring to me. But if you are, two points:

1. Au contraire. I think maybe you start foaming at the mouth if anyone has the temerity to suggest that free access to therapeutic terminations has a downside.

2. I have a partner, a 9 month old child (hopefully more to come) and have just completed a term in paediatrics and reproductive medicine. My views are not uninformed and were not arrived at quickly. I love wome and babies (and foetuses!) and I might just end up working with them for a career

Stickman, no I wasn't thinking of you with the 'foaming at the mouth' criticism. You have to admit though that there are a few posters who have no truck with listening to a woman's point of view, or women full stop. Hopefully they love other men, otherwise life would be pretty lonely, not to say cold every night.

In any case, the venom of some, especially HRS, is particularly sad. It is blatantly obvious that he has been deeply hurt and this forum is an avenue for him to offload his anger.

I have read the article a couple of times and still the article is of no assistance or enlightenment. The article is about population imbalance. Whether abortion was available or not, there would still be a population imbalance.

You state you are working in the health field.

Say the title was 'The Global Surgical bind'. The article points out an obsession with physical beauty in our Western society and links this with surgery.

You, the reader are to assume:
-surgery to improve physical appearance is always bad.
-People would not do anything about their physical appearance if plastic surgery was prohibited.
-People would not be obsessed with their physical appearance if there was no plastic surgery.
-the population should naturally be divided into ugly and beautiful people.

What does the issue of available surgery in itself have to do with our notion of physical beauty or ugliness and the importance of this in our society?

Just because the author states the obvious, that abortions are also used for sex selection, adds nothing to the issue of the implications of a cultural preference towards a particular sex on a population.

The author was very careful not to make any inference to the morality of abortions. He didn't need to. You could almost hear the audible gasp throughout cyberspace: WHAT! Abortions just because the woman wants a boy! Now those women have gone TOO far! LOOK at the consequences!

That's the nub of the article. Real clever, now we're arguing abortion.

Celivia,
There have been a number of aware and loving feminists who have proposed that the male population is culled, and reproduction carried out through IVF only. I have always been suspicious of this, as there seems to be very few feminists who oppose IVF.

Ultimately the greatest problem with large scale abortion (and in Australia we have large scale abortion) is that it reduces the development of other forms of contraception, or the development of other ways of stopping unwanted pregnancy.

For example: There is (or was) an Indian medical researcher who was researching a form of male sterilization that was easily reversible, and could be carried out without any form of surgery. However that researcher is up against the abortion industry, and in India the abortion industry must be a very large industry with enormous capital behind them.

Even if the researcher's method of male sterilization did work, that researcher would have a very large task ahead of them trying to get their method used, because they would be battling the abortion industry.

So feminists continuously pushing abortion is also maintaining the abortion industry, which has shown itself to have the most minimal ethics or real concern for women (and of course no concern at all for the unborn)

It is questionable that women are badly treated in India, as Indian women live on average 3 years longer than Indian men. If women were being badly treated in India, then women in India would be dieing much younger than men in India.

I haven’t been able to find anything of any reliability in feminism, and I doubt very much whether feminists could ever adequately represent anyone except feminists.

Yvonne,
For someone who thinks that aborting more baby girls than boys allows women more choice in who to marry, I think you are very feminist, very similar to the aware and loving feminist Billie, who wants to treat as farmyard animals, suitable only for their sperm.

A very perspicacious analogy, Yvonne!
If the author had been writing about plastic surgery, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d suggested to ban mirrors for ugly people. Ugly people would still be discriminated against, enslaved and exploited by the beautiful, but hey, at least they wouldn’t request surgery and join the elite beauty club.

Stickman,
That I called you a misogynist was mainly based on your first post combined with the tone you used to Yvonne.
I do know Yvonne from other debates and I find her views balanced and down-to-earth.
I haven’t met you in other threads and bunched you together with HRS here because of that comment. I apologise that I jumped to that conclusion. I am glad that you agree that women should have equal rights, thank you for making that clear.

I am, perhaps, one of the people who are ‘foaming at the mouth’ when someone agrees with the author that free access to therapeutic terminations has a downside. As I said, there are worse things than not to be born as a girl in these girl-hating, boy-worshipping environments. It’s more humane to shape up the laws and reinforcing them- such as the ban on dowries than it is to ban sex-selective abortion.

HRS
“It is questionable that women are badly treated in India…”
OMG I don’t believe you're even denying that!
Women have biological advantages; they are more resistant to malnutrition and disease. They do not live longer because they’re being treated similar to men. They have a huge social disadvantage and many live in ill health.

Ironically, the health of women is very important for their offspring. By not looking after the health of females, they produce weaker offspring and boys, because of their biology, are more susceptible to these weaknesses than girls. By improving the health of females, the health of baby boys is improved as well.
This is something that misogynists overlook.
So what if women live a few years longer than men if their quality of life is abhorrent?
It just means a few more years of suffering.

Celivia,
Members of the Moonie cult were programmed to call someone a Satanist if that person disagreed with them.

Members of the feminist cult are being programmed to call someone a misogynist if that person disagrees with them.

Same thing, different cult.

The problem in India can be easily solved by restricting the number of times a woman is told if her unborn is a boy or girl, but of course feminist don’t seem to want any restrictions placed on abortion.

Abortion is central to the cult of feminism.

HRS

“Members of the feminist cult…”
I wouldn’t know about that, have never belonged to a group or cult. The fact that other people have the same opinion as I do is their business; I express my personal views, not those of a cult.

“programmed to call someone a misogynist if that person disagrees with them…”
LOL, you seem to be programmed against anything that benefits women. Why is it so difficult for you to accept that women in these countries need more rights and that the problem is that girls are seen as a problem?

You actually have presented only one on-topic argument, which was, ““The problem in India can be easily solved by restricting the number of times a woman is told if her unborn is a boy or girl”
You provide the best monologues I’ve ever seen on OLO. Same old same old argument that you’ve used several times and has been refuted several times.
Read back and either give a reply to these rebuttals; ‘coz merely repeating the same ol’ ain’t doing it for me.

Keep repeating your one-and-only on topic argument and I won’t bother to reply to you anymore.

HRS, do you know who has to cough up for the dowry for dear daughter in order to get her married? That's right, it is daddy.

When the wife produces a son, that means dowry coming INto his household. HIS household.

Many sons-increased wealth and status; and support in old age.

But if the wife keeps on producing daughters, that's bad. OUT goes the wealth to some other family. Result: poverty and no kids to look after you when you are old and infirm.

Do you think it just might be possible that it is daddy who wants to know if a pregnancy will produce a son or daughter?

You as a women loving daddy would gladly pay for all your daughters, regardless of personal cost, we know that, but unfortunately not all men are as caring and loving towards their women folk as you are. We're not talking about feminists here, but your daughters.

We know that to you it would not matter one iota if you had many daughters and not one son, but not all men are like you. Some men want sons to carry on the family wealth, name, prestige and bring comfort in old age. Just as your daughters and their husbands will be doing in your son-in-laws families.

Hi Yvonne

I don't think the analogy was remotely illuminating actually. Rather than labour through it, here is a point-form summary of the original article:

1. Many people (me and by all accounts, the author too) support safe legal termination of pregnancy (TOP) but find sex-selective TOP repugnant

2. China and India do it a lot for cultural reasons despite its being illegal - in practice the illegality is irrelevant as it is easily circumvented

3. Large sex-ratio imbalances will (already are) causing social problems

4. Ethically, sex-selective TOP represents a potential 'thin end of the wedge' for selecting out genetic 'imperfections'

5. There are several ways of tackling the problem. One is changing misogynist attitudes through education (which appears to be Celivia and your opinion also, no?)
Another, favoured by the author, is economic development that provides equal access to employment/education for women

6. At no point does he say TOP should be banned

So based on the above, I am utterly mystified at your objection to the article.

Celivia said:

"I am, perhaps, one of the people who are ‘foaming at the mouth’ when someone agrees with the author that free access to therapeutic terminations has a downside."

What? How can you possible deny that there are downsides to TOP? It is a medical/surgical procedure, which means that there are complications, including (rarely) death, and more commonly uterine/cervical damage rendering future pregnancies problematic. I am not saying this is common but it happens (link to consent form women sign prior to surgery http://www.health.qld.gov.au/informedconsent/ConsentForms/obgyn/O&G_26.pdf)
There can also be psychological damage (especially when as Yvonne rightly points out, there is pressure from the father).

By all means say that after weighing up the pros and cons, on balance it is better to have access to safe, legal TOP (as I already have) but to deny downsides to TOP is ludicrous.

(cont)

Funny thing is, I don't think I actually disagree with you two about all that much. The common ground is:
- China and India have appalling patriarchal attitudes to women and women feel they are forced into TOP
- It would be better to change the culture so that this pressure does not exist
The author disagrees with neither from my reading. So why the argument?

The only query I am left with is, from a philosophical point of view, do you both disagree ethically with sex-selective TOP?

Hi Stickman,
Yes we don’t disagree all that much.

“How can you possible deny that there are downsides to TOP?”
I’m not.
Remember, I already expressed my concern about the health risks of abortion on June 18 when I replied to Billy.
In short, I said, “Abortions are more of a health risk than proper methods of contraception.”

This time, I was quoting YOU (June 19) and was replying to “free access to therapeutic terminations”.
If a woman needs a therapeutic termination, and has no free access to it, then I can see downsides to NO free access, not to free access.
Aren’t therapeutic abortions usually done in order to preserve maternal health?

My main problem with the author is that he says that sex ratio imbalances cause social problems.

My argument is that this particular reason is no good enough reason to object to sex-selective abortion because NOT having access to sex-selective abortion creates even more social (and other) problems.

The sex ratio imbalance happens to create more problems for men than for women. They can't find brides with dowries. Well, too bad.
Not having access to sex-selective abortion, downside included, creates far more problems for girls and women, and financially, for men, too.

Why does the author think that the problems for men are worse than the problems for women? Why should women have to come to the rescue to solve the men's problems but increase their own ones?

In my opinion, the social (and other) problems for women and girls are far greater than those for men.

Do I ethically agree with sex-selective TOP?
I would have to know the exact situation before I could agree or disagree on ethical grounds.
In some situations there are worse things than not to be born in a certain environment.
And in this particular situation I tend to lean towards agreeing that sex-selective abortion is ethical in some parts of India- at least until the situation for women and little girls improves in these countries.

Celivia,

You seem to be suggesting that it is better to kill girls in the womb rather than have them born into what you regard as a patriarchal society.

Your argument seems very similar to the feminist argument of abortion vs adoption. That is, it is preferable to kill the child rather than adopt it out.

Abortion appears to be the answer to everything for aware and loving feminists.

You also seem to be saying that it is necessary to educate people into acceptance of abortion, and also educate people into aborting equal numbers of girls and boys.

However there wouldn’t be more girls being aborted than boys if there wasn’t abortion.

Maybe its time for aware and loving feminists to start and think laterally, and to think of alternatives to abortion.

Hi HRS
“that it is better to kill girls in the womb rather than have them born into what you regard as a patriarchal society”
No, I do not think of these societies as just patriarchal. I think of them as female-hostile societies.

Would you want to be a girl these societies? If you answer yes, I hope you would love to:
* Be at risk of being strangled or buried alive soon after birth.
* Be fed only when there are leftovers from the males’ plates.
* Have anaemia, which affect 90% of girls
* Be far less likely to be educated than your brothers.
* Be in high danger of rapes, assaults, and dowry-related murders.
* Be at a higher risk than anywhere else to die from childbirth.
* Work longer hours and do more arduous work than men and hugely underpaid.
* Remain unrecognised no matter how hard you work.
* Be spit on, cursed at, or even bashed when you deliver a girl.
* Be denied to own anything and have no inheritance rights.
* Be brought to health facilities in more advanced states off illness than your brothers, and be taken to less qualified doctors.
* Be 61% more likely to die between the ages of 1-5 than your brothers.

The above statements I gained from websites including Unicef. You can do your own research if you doubt what I say.

Stickman,

We do seem to agree. But. It could simply be an issue of interpretation, but I still find that the article, from the title on, diverts the focus on abortion.

My personal view on sex selective abortion is still unresolved. I've been thinking about that, because I instinctively dislike the idea.

I don't know yet if my motives for disliking it are wholly subjective. I support the availability of abortion in cases of failed contraception and the subsequent inability, or unwillingness to proceed with a pregnancy. I'm working through if and why the reasons are intrinsically different.

The closest I've come is that in the case of TOP for sex selection the pregnancy in itself is not the issue, but was planned/expected.

Celivia,
I would question anything from the United Nations. It is well known that the United Nations has become a very feminist and gender prejudiced organisation, that is gradually losing credibility, as it becomes more feminist and gender prejudiced.

India is one of the great success stories of last century. With an enormous population, it has been able to increase the life expectancy of its people from about 20 years in the early 1900’s, to above world average in 2008.

The life expectancy in India seems to be increasing each year, and this is not because of feminists, but mainly because of better sewage treatment systems that decrease diarrhea, which was a major cause of infant mortality. I don’t know of too many aware, loving and gender prejudiced feminists out digging sewage trenches.

The belief that women are being badly treated in India does not fit into statistics, when females in India now have a life expectancy of 71.9 years, compared to males at 66.87 years.

I also think the occurrence of many more abortions of baby girls than baby boys in India could be exaggerated or feminist type misinformation.

Consider the following statistics, and pick which country is India, and which country is Australia.

at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.8 male(s)/female
total population: 0.99 male(s)/female (2008 est.)

at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.1 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.9 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2008 est.)

Yvonne said:

"The closest I've come is that in the case of TOP for sex selection the pregnancy in itself is not the issue, but was planned/expected."

Exactly.

Celivia:

The term "therapeutic" just distinguishes them from spontaneous, or naturally occurring abortions (miscarriages), which are of course extremely common and not controversial.

The point about downsides is that they exist when you HAVE access to TOP - AND when you don't. It is not a simple argument, which I acknowledge. All I am asking you to acknowledge is that there are downsides to therapeutic TOP, including those that I listed. I read your quote correctly, and here it is again:

"I am, perhaps, one of the people who are ‘foaming at the mouth’ when someone agrees with the author that free access to therapeutic terminations has a downside."

So, yes I state again that I believe that there are downsides to free access to TOP, such as increased potential for sex-selective TOP. By all means tell me that you think there are downsides to NOT having access to TOP, but we aren't arguing that point, I have already stated that I agree with you about that.

Another point which has not been raised yet, is that sex-selective TOP is possible here and now in Australia (kit available online) and is doubtless occurring right now. Since you don't believe it is necessarily unethical in India, do you think that it is unethical here in Australia in 2008?

Stickman,
Thanks; I defined “therapeutic” differently.
I agree that there are downsides of having free access to “therapeutic” TOP- I’d acknowledged that already, I just defined the word “therapeutic” differently.
Childbirth, of course, has downsides, too.

Sex-selective TOP in Australia… I have problems with accepting that unless it’s done purely for medical reasons. I struggle with this issue.
Women in Australia are under no pressure to produce a particular gender, at least not from our society.
I’m not sure how pressured our immigrant women from these countries still are to have a sex-selective TOP when they live elsewhere.
I read some time ago that pregnant Indian immigrant women in the UK travelled to India in groups to have a TOP after they found out they were pregnant with a female foetus.
It’s sad that there’s nobody in these women’s lives who loves these them enough to say, “Hey, you don’t need to go through an abortion, your baby is going to be special no matter what the gender is.”

HRS,
If we look at the state Kerala, where women have a higher status than elsewhere in India, we also see far fewer female foeticide.

The more equal and educated women become, the better it is for everybody and for the country.
The Indian govt is acknowledging that educating girls is important because they now give an incentive to women by offering free education for one girl in every family.
I think the Indian government really has to adopt a zero-tolerance policy by enforcing the ban on dowries, which would help a great deal.

As for your denial that girls/women in India/China are being treated as well as boys/men- I’ve refuted that life-expectancy argument already. Stop repeating the same arguments and ignoring the obvious.
Someone I know and who’s involved in charity regularly visits orphanages in certain parts of India-these are full of girls (and only very few boys) who have been dumped there by their parents just because they’re girls.

Celivia,
It doesn’t require much education. It requires education of doctors not to tell women if their unborn baby is male or female.

That type of education is probably necessary in this country also, before aware and loving feminists such as Billie start believing that it is necessary to abort baby boys, because they are male.

The abandoning of little girls and boys in India is definitely a cause for concern, and India is now pleading for other countries to adopt such children (if you didn’t know).

However so many countries that could afford to adopt such children now prefer to spend taxpayer money on expensive, normally futile, ethically questionable, and feminist supported IVF, so that single women can have a baby without a father.

At the end of the year, women are living longer than men in most countries, including India and China. As an aware, loving, biased and gender prejudiced feminist, you automatically attribute this to women being better than men.

Others may attribute it to so many men sacrificing themselves to keep women alive.

Celivia said:

"Women in Australia are under no pressure to produce a particular gender, at least not from our society.
I’m not sure how pressured our immigrant women from these countries still are to have a sex-selective TOP when they live elsewhere."

I agree with this and I was thinking of Chinese/Indian immigrant women being pressure into doing this.. it would be very difficult to study as we don't really know how many TOPs are carried out in this country as it is, let alone how many under those circumstances. It is just worth our considering I guess, that it may be a lot closer to home than the article would suggest.