PRI Staff
The long-standing neglect and outright hostility often directed towards young girls in some Asian countries, appears to have become increasingly common in recent years as women opt for smaller families, according to new studies reported at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America held in May in New Orleans.
The new research, utilizing demographic data from India, China and Taiwan, suggests that biases against girls have not only not lessened but increased.
With the pressure for smaller sized families — pushed by the many population control organizations at work in the countries — an intensified desire for boys has developed.
As a result, the latest vital statistics show that boy-to-girl ratios are continuing to increase in the Asian nations studied. Besides sex-selective abortion, contraceptive practice enters the picture; those families in which the first borns are sons are far more likely to begin contracepting than those families whose first or only offspring are girls.
The result, reported by Shelly Clark of Princeton University, is a peculiar pattern of small, son-heavy families and larger, daughter-heavy ones.
In addition, Clark said, an analysis of sex ratios at birth indicates that sex-selective abortions are probably on the rise in Taiwan.
Although direct documentation of such procedures is lacking, strong indirect evidence exists. For example, a study of some 2,500 women found that in cases where the sex of the fetus was determined during pregnancy, the women were 30 percent more likely to deliver a boy than a girl. (The normal sex ratio at birth is 106:100 boys-to-girls, a well-known and long accepted statistic prior to the recent onset of sex-determination techniques.)
Clark further cited statistics indicating that women who already had a daughter but no son, were 21 percent more likely than women in their first pregnancies to test for the sex of their fetus. Those who had two or three daughters and no son were found to be 60 percent more likely to get their next fetus tested. According to Clark, the data was “strong evidence of sex selection intentions.”
Another conference participant, Judith Banister of the U.S. Census Bureau, reported on a new analysis of data from China, a nation with a long history of skewed sex ratios. Using Chinese census figures from the past decade, she calculated that about 1.5 million female fetuses had been selectively aborted between the mid-1980s and 1990.
Harvard University researchers Monica Das Gupta and Maria Bhat used Indian census data and hospital records to calculate the sex discrepancy in that country and to determine how much of that was likely due to prenatal testing and abortion. Their analysis indicated that “more than 1 million girls” were selectively aborted between 1981 and 1991, most of them during the latter half of that decade. At the same time the researchers found that about 4 million Indian girls “disappeared” during their infancy, suggesting that sex selective abortion is not substituting for female infanticide but rather supplementing it. “It has been an additive effect,” Das Gupta said, one which she expects “to see more of” in future years.
(“Anti-girl bias rises in Asia, studies show,” The Washington Post, May 11, pp. 1. 16.)
China’s Fujian Provincial People’s Congress has adopted a new law which bans the identifying of the sex of unborn babies in the province. The law, the first local regulation of its kind in China — national laws have been enacted with limited success — is aimed at keeping a more equitable balance in the sex structure of the population.
Doctors who conduct illegal sex identification could lose their licenses to practice medicine; women who illegally abort a fetus after undergoing sex selection will not be allowed to give birth to their first baby for five years.
According to China’s fourth nationwide census in 1990, the sex ratio for Fujian Province is 118.7:100 (boys-to-girls).
(“Funjian bans illegal sex identification of unborn,” XINHUA, 6 June.)
International population controllers are relying on the term “Democratic Supervision” to mask the heinous abuse of Chinese men, women and children under China’s brutal one-child policy.
In a major apologetic for the Beijing regime the International Planned Parenthood Federation (which in the past has turned down money from the US government rather than cease cooperating with the Chinese forced abortion and sterilization policies) claims its “China Family Planning Association “performs a valuable role in representing people in the family planning programme.”
The CFPA claims to encourage the government to adopt a tactic that relies on “information and education” rather than economic “disincentives”; to help people “choose contraception rather than abortion” and adopt “day to day family planning management” instead of “irregular campaigns.”
The government should also not beat or assault people in custody, the CFPA says. Nor should it destroy their possessions or steal them; or impose “arbitrary” penalties or penalize relatives, interfere with “legal” childbearing or conduct “pregnancy checks” on young, unmarried women.
All of this, of course, means nothing if Chinese men and women have no choice but to participate in the program in the first place.
(Planned Parenthood Challenges, 1996/1 p.25–8.)
