China to outlaw aborting female fetuses

[Khephra]

China to outlaw aborting female fetuses
Last Updated Fri, 07 Jan 2005 08:56:49 EST
CBC News

BEIJING - China intends to make it a criminal offence to abort a female fetus, hoping to correct a major imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls born in the country.

The practice is currently banned, but there are no criminal consequences if parents disobey the ban or doctors carry out such an abortion.

Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in China. Worldwide, fewer than 110 boys are born for every 100 girls.

Boys tend to die from violence, accidents and disease at a higher rate than girls, so the ratio equals out later in life before women start becoming more numerous than men of the same age.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/01/07/china-abortions050107.html

[Ripley]

1. Well that's a step in the right direction, but...

I didn't realize it was only a difference of 19 more boys per 100. I was led to believe it was like 100 to 1.

[SlackJawedYokel]

4. Multiply that by the billions of young women in China.

and that 19 per hundred starts to add up *REAL* quick.
For 2 billion eligible women(rough guess) that is almost 380 million men without the possibility for a mate(sorta, kinda).
Definitely a buyers market for the girls.

Cletus

[Ripley]

5. There are not "BILLIONS of YOUNG women in China."

Lots more than men, yes, but not BILLIONS. But didn't you note the last paragraph...it said that more boys die in childhood than girls for various reasons, so it tends to equal out.

However, I would think the number of child-bearing age females is also lessened due to the mail-order bride business. I know of 5 such cases in my local area.

[Ripley]

18. Meant: lots more men, not "than" men.

Sorry that was unclear, too late to edit my post.

[jdj]

63. strange part aout the "evening out" stats.

I didn't know China was that violent a society, that it could correct a birth rate ratio like this.

[wickerwoman]

44. It's exacerbated by the one-child policy in other ways as well.

Talking to my female Chinese students I've found that their attitudes range from "I would only marry a foreigner" to "I hope to marry a foreigner but if I can't I'll settle for a Chinese man." I have yet to meet a young Chinese woman who wouldn't throw herself at the first foreign man she saw no matter how fat, old, bald, poor, ugly or cruel. They want the hell out, mostly so they can have more than one child, and they see marriage as the only way to achieve it.

It breaks my heart really. There's a mixed-race culture living in the apartment under mine and I suspect strongly that she's battered around. Another couple I know of the husband does squat, lives in a seperate apartment from his family and lets his wife support him and their two kids. Talk about a bloody drone. My female students go on and on about how beautiful mixed-race babies are and ignore the fact that something like 80% of these marriages end in divorce. I'd be interested in seeing abuse statistics as well but I doubt they exist.

[stepnw1f]

58. "5 such cases in my local area" of mail-order brides?

I hope people realise this is a form of indentured servitude. And for those unwilling to make the personal sacrifices necessary in a relationship, are in for a bad dose of reality. But hey.... like used plastic dinnerware, we'll just throw the old out and buy new ones.

The message behind this type of action:

Screw women's rights, we can be as big an asshole as we want. We'll just buy a bride from a third or second World country!

[TahitiNut]

7. Total population of mainland China: 1.3 billion

Age structure:

0-14 years: 24.3% (male 163,821,081; female 148,855,387)
15-64 years: 68.4% (male 452,354,428; female 426,055,713)
65 years and over: 7.3% (male 43,834,528; female 49,382,568) (2002 est.)

[Igel]

17. Never 100 to 1, but

I'm pretty sure I've seen descriptions saying that the #s vary by location. The 119/100 ratio is the average, I think some areas get up to 130/100, while other areas are closer to the natural 105/100 or whatever it is.

India's approach was to order doctors to stop telling parents the sex of the kid and doing tests that would give away the secret. Want to know if the kid has 6 eyes? Test's ok. Want to know if the kid's genitals are inside or outside? Nope.

[baba]

59. The problem with that approach

Not telling women the sex of the child while in utero might lead to more female infanticide, unfortunately. However, it may be easier to enforce laws against infanticide than selective abortion.

[Jesus H. Christ]

35. Yeah, there's a lot of propaganda.

Some basis in truth, I'm not apologizing for China, but it gets greatly exagerrated.

I can't remember what the natural ratio is for births of boys vs. girls. Contrary to conventional wisdom, boys are slightly more likely to be conceived and born then girls. The reason that females are the majority of the population is that, due to problems with the Y chromosome, males are more likely to be miscarried, or die in infancy.

[Hillary08]

39. That's what I thought too...

As long as the practice has been being reported, I thought the ratio was much more imbalanced!

[AlbizuX]

2. that really sucks....

if it's hard to get girls here in America, imagine those poor saps in China...

That means that there is at least 19 boys for every 100 girls that are forced to masturbate all their lives...the horror!

But, yeah, jokes aside, it's about damn time China aborted this dumb practice, especially since its been making some very positive strides into global leadership.

I welcome a modernized, civilized, internationalist China on the world stage...would be a welcome change from imperialist America's way of acting with the world.

[Tweed]

45. for true

[MaineDem]

3. Excellent news!!!

It's about time.

[Sporadicus]

6. The Practice of Aborting Females Has Implications for China's Gov't

Millions of unemployed, unattached young males presents the possibility of social unrest, especially in China's cities.

[NashVegas]

20. So They're Choosing

Unrest over population control?

If they were that concerned, why have limits on childbearing at all in the first place?

Before we all became so uptight, polygamy was flexible, so they told me in high school.

When communities were underpopulated, men would mate with as many women as possible. When they were over-populated, the girls got variety.

They didn't tell us exactly which communites these were and when they were, IIRC.

[Misunderestimator]

33. I think that the point of outlawing the abortions...

is that women were aborting female fetuses because they WANTED a male. It's about population control, but it's a sexist/patriarchal population control.

On edit... I didn't read your entire post... I agree with you on the problem of limiting childbirth.

[tblue37]

51. Not so much that the mothers wanted a male child,

but that their husbands did. Because of the one-child rule female infanticide is fairly common, especially in rural areas. If the husband doesn't get the son he wants, then he might decide to kill the daughter and try again--however often he has to.

[phylny]

54. I read something recently that stated India is having the same female

infanticide difficulties.

If a baby girl is born, the midwife will snap her neck and cause immediate death.

[madrchsod]

8. 20 million

is a figure i heard not to long ago. what do you do with that many young males in a large society? you put them in a uniform and arm them for a war with india.

[Karenina]

9. or...

whomever...

[AllyCat]

11. I suppose the anti-abortion folks have never really cared

about the huge abortion rates in China and India. After all, those folks are mostly some shade of brown.

Has anyone heard the abortion foes talk about this?

[ThePlumber]

19. Abortion Foes

Yes. I have heard many talk about the forced abortions and the abortions encouraged because of the state's policies.

Now those policies are coming home to roost and they are trying to prevent problems.

In rural areas they are offering greater retirement benefits to couples to keep at least one daughter. Note that in rural areas couples are allowed to have two children without penalty to help with field work. Most couples have favored sons to support them in their old age; aborting or giving up daughters for adoption.

I also read about some tax bonus for urban parents, but I forget the details.

[Khephra]

30. Yes

Fundies say that our family planning dollars abroad are used to back abortions in China and that's their main argument for wanting the US to not fund any overseas birth control programs (whether or not those programs actually fund abortions, of course).

[bleedingheart]

10. so now the parents will just suffocate the girls after birth

this law doesn't change the fact that the culture of devaluing females hasn't been addressed.

edited.

[MaineDem]

14. I've been wondering about that myself

The article didn't address this at all.

Suffocation or drowning seem to be the fututre for many Chinese newborn females. I hope that changes.

[bleedingheart]

15. I hope it changes also...

but I bet that most chinese couples that abort based on sex are those that can afford the test to determine the sex. The couples that can't afford the test wait 9 months to find out the sex of the child and if it is a girl...they either accept the child, adopt the child out...or worse (hopefully it is rare but I am not sure of the stats)

Sadly unless the culture changes what is worse the parents that abort the pregnancy or the ones that a child they will just cast off anyways...

[TO Kid]

12. The wonders of social engineering

These clowns never bother with things like the law of unintended consequences. Every time they try to alter human behaviour all they do is increase the speed at which they chase their tails.

[daleo]

25. All laws are social engineering

Including laws against infanticide, a practice which obviously comes under the scope of "human behaviour" (or we wouldn't need laws against it).

[TheWraith]

60. Not really.

It's a matter of restraining the non-normal behavior of the minority versus the normal behavior of the majority. Most people want to have kids. Most people DON'T want to murder their kids. When you start interfering with and attempting to control normal behavior, you can start producing social psych problems.

[LibertyLover]

13. Outlaying the abortion of females in China

The Chinese government may make it illegal to abort females (and I applaud their efforts), but they will never be able to control the abandonment of newly born female children, especially in the countryside. There, it is still imperative for a woman to have a son. I shouldn't complain however, as it was through the abandonment of a one day old little girl on a doorstep in Wuxue, Hubei province, that brought me my daughter.

[David__77]

16. The solution is to undo farming privatization, not outlaw abortion.

Outlawing abortion is not the solution--that will undermine the status of women in China.

When China's peasantry worked together in peoples communes and state farms, there was no economic incentive to not raise female children. Now that the right-wing leadership, after 1978, destroyed the collective farming system, China's peasant is left to fend for himself, without the mutual aid of his fellow peasants. This is a shame, and is responsible for the gender imbalance.

[ThePlumber]

21. There is a reason they abandoned the collective farm.

There is a reason they abandoned the collective farm. It was unproductive. They did not have enough food. It was the same problem the USSR had which caused it to import grain many times from the United States. China learned its lesson and privatized.

If you have not noticed, it is apparent that the leadership of China considers communism and socialism failures. But in characteristic Chinese fashion they did not plunge into change but incrementally changed bits and pieces to see the result and then make further changes.

[David__77]

22. China imports grain now, not when they were socialist.

The fact is that carving up the large farms into little private plots has not raised production in line with the increase in farm labor. China is now a net importer of grain. Read William Hinton's "The Great Reversal" about the devastating effects of decollectivization.

China's leadership is wrong to go in for capitalism in farming, whether they are open about doing so or not.

[ThePlumber]

24. Hinton is not a useful authority

Hinton is a man who greatly admired Mao, so I doubt he would have anything bad to say about collectives. Can you give me an authority who is not so biased?

Your statement:
"The fact is that carving up the large farms into little private plots has not raised production in line with the increase in farm labor. China is now a net importer of grain."

carefully avoids whether privatization increased overall output.

In any case being a net importer of grain does not necessarily imply a problem with grain production domestically. China has a very small amount of arable land compared to its population. They have programs in place that require any arable land not used for agricultural purposes be replaced with some other arable land being freed up. On a per capita basis its arable land is at 1/3 the world average.

The fact is that China is able to pay for that grain it imports by exporting many consumer goods around the world. I would bet many items in your own home are stamped "Made in China". This is not the case because it is a socialist stronghold. It is because it found that capitalism (even a highly regulated form) can be very profitable.

[David__77]

28. So?

Yes, Hinton admires Mao. So what? Many who do admire Mao also attacked the peoples communes and broke them apart. From a Chinese magazine, a peasant writes, "...Individual farming now restricts the development of productive forces in rural areas . As many places have achieved agricultural mechanization, individual farming is detrimental to unified cultivation, planning and arrangement. An individual peasant household cannot handle certain things properly by itself and it is not cost-effective even it can. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening in the countryside. Some upstarts have not taken good care of the fields contracted out to them while some poor peasants have no money to invest in the fields left to their care though they wish to do a good job in tilling the fields. All this seriously hampers China's agricultural development."

I think it a telling argument that accords with the facts on the ground. This is not a debate that is won or lost on account of this or that statistic. One's world outlook is fundamental. To me, China's collective agriculture not only raised China from the depths of feudalism under the Kuomintang, but also was more humane and just.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Have you been to China?

I was there in 1990, and the countryside was modernizing rapidly. Farmers were building new houses all over the place. Our hosts (at three different universities) told us that farmers made more than they did.

On one of our trips through the countryside, our van broke down, and since the driver had to walk to the next town to get a towtruck, we were stuck standing in the hot sun. The people in the house on the hill overlooking the road invited us to come in and wait, so we sat on their front porch and drank tea until the towtruck arrived. The house was plain, but they had electricity, running water, and radio-CD set, and I noticed that the little boy wore a baseball cap that said "Shanghai" on the front. I asked in my pidgin Chinese, "Have you been to Shanghai?" (We were about 50 miles out of Chongqing in Sichuan Province) Yes, they told me, they had gone to Shanghai for a week on vacation the previous year.

The trouble with the old system was that it was inflexible. The central government told farmers what to produce and when to produce it, and they got the same subsistence wages no matter what. They had to follow orders that came down from on high, no matter how stupid. One was the "kill the birds" campaign, which was based on the idea that China had a food shortage because the birds were eating all the crops. So everyone all over rural China went out killing birds, only to discover that, duh! insects multiplied out of control and really consumed the crops.

The worst period was the so-called Great Leap Forward of 1957-58, when communes were ordered to build smelters and produce steel and other metals. In order to meet their quotas, they stinted on food production, resulting in a famine. That wasn't the only problem: the steel the farmers produced was of such low quality as to be unusable. But everyone was afraid to tell the next level up that the Great Leap Forward was a failure, so they sent glowing reports up the chain of command.

It was only after Zhou Enlai went back to his home village and saw that people were starving that the idea of steel mills on communes was abandoned.

There certainly are downsides to the dismantling of the communes. One is the loss of the social safety net, which is true for everyone, not just rural people. In the old days, work units provided the "iron rice bowl," a lifelong minimum standard of living as long as you followed the rules. On the other hand, your work unit had control over your personal life, too, telling you what job you would do, where you would live, when and to whom you could get married, if and when you could have a child, and if you could leave your immediate area for any reason. For example, you couldn't get on an intercity bus or train without a note from your work unit.

The other downside is the loss of guaranteed employment. The farms are no longer required to provide jobs for everyone, and there are better job opportunities in the city, so you find a lot of unskilled laborers flocking to the cities illegally and camping out in buildings that are under construction. (These days, you're allowed to travel freely, but you still can't choose which town to live in.)

So it's been a mixed bag.

As for the claim that China never imported food during the Maoist era, that may or may not be true. I do recall that they had two major famines, one after the Great Leap Forward, and another around 1962, when I recall news reports of starving people trying to sneak into Hong Kong or Macao, either overland or in makeshift boats.

If the Chinese government didn't import food, it wasn't because they didn't need to, but I do recall reports of their buying wheat from Argentina and Australia, because before Nixon's trip to China, U.S. farmers were not allowed to sell crops there.

[David__77]

31. You make many good points.

I'm not saying that the "reform and opening" is without merit. Undoubtedly, the economy has continued to advance tremendously. But I believe that even better results could have come from within the framework of the peoples communes and collective economy. Even during the peak of the Cultural Revolution, the economy expanded.

The work units did exert too much control of personal behaviors, it is true. Part of this stemmed from concerns about infiltration by KMT agents and threats of war from the two superpowers.

The little industry projects on the communes was a noble, though ultimately unproductive endeavor. It is important to break down the distinction between urban and rural, and this was a step in that direction, but it lacked the necessary technique and was "ahead of its time" in that there wasn't the capital to get things going.

Inflexibilites were a problem, but China was always, after the Leap, much more flexible than the Soviets as regards central planning. The Chinese devolved a lot of tactical decision-making to the local units. The commune had to turn over a portion of its output to the state, but made many decisions for itself. Within the commune, the production brigages also had some autonomy. Interestingly, a Soviet criticism of the Chinese was that they were "anarchist" because of such things.

Also, I don't think, in principle, it is WRONG for China to import food if it because they are making a strategic decision to focus resources elsewhere. But I think that is not the case. Again, William Hinton outlines a lot of information about this.

[StoryTeller]

23. Privatization of farming is not the real issue or the cause

You can't take our own cultural approach to abortion and overlay it on Chinese culture. As far as I can tell, the Chinese don't look at abortion as a "woman's right" issue. It's a population control issue, and, as noted in this article, a gender-preference issue.

The status of women in China is not as bad as in some countries, but there is definitely a long-standing cultural preference and reliance on males. It used to be (not so very long ago) that when a woman got married, she would say goodbye to her family forever and end up taking care of her husband's parents. Her husband could forbid her to even see her own parents again if he chose. Polygamy was not unheard of, and even into the 20th century, parts of rural China practiced foot binding of women. Female infanticide has always been a problem, from what I've read and studied.

This has nothing to do with economic structures of farming. It has everything to do with a very traditional culture that is slow to change. Even now, the reason that so many Chinese girls are available for adoption (including my daughter from Yunnan Province) is a complicated combination of things like rural poverty, urban areas selectively enforcing a one-child policy (which is starting to change), a lack of any social security system for the elderly, and a culture that demands that a son (or more accurately a son's wife) must care for his parents in their old age. I'm all for children helping their parents, but when you require it must be a son, and then impose on them fines or other punishment for having too many children, you put people in a no-win situation.

I do believe the culture is changing and the government is beginning to realize what their policies have created. But there's still a huge mess, and no simple explanations, and very few solutions. I'm glad that they are cracking down on gender-based abortions. But I also fear that it could result in increased infanticide later on, as well as more abandoned infants. From what I've been told by people who have studied this, infanticide DOES happen, even though they don't officially admit it. That troubles me much more than even the abortions.

[David__77]

26. I don't see where you disagree...

You say, "the reason that so many Chinese girls are available for adoption (including my daughter from Yunnan Province) is a complicated combination of things like rural poverty, urban areas selectively enforcing a one-child policy (which is starting to change), a lack of any social security system for the elderly, and a culture that demands that a son (or more accurately a son's wife) must care for his parents in their old age."

These are all economic factors. My argument is that the current agricultural policy is a contributing factor. The cultural tradition stemming from the above factors is also a factor, but the bottom line is that there is an economic incentive not to have female children, particularly in the rural areas where one doesn't have access to work unit services for children available in the urban areas.

Abortion has in the past been framed as a women's rights issue in China, but not since the 70s. The China slogan "women hold up half the sky" means that women must control their reproduction with birth control and have access to abortion on demand.

[StoryTeller]

32. This is where I disagree...

You said in your original post:

"Now that the right-wing leadership, after 1978, destroyed the collective farming system, China's peasant is left to fend for himself, without the mutual aid of his fellow peasants. This is a shame, and is responsible for the gender imbalance."

I'm saying that as I understand it, the factors causing the gender imbalance are much more numerous and complicated than simply the privatization of farming. Perhaps that's one contributing factor, as you then said in the post I'm replying to now. Then again, maybe it isn't. I haven't studied that particular issue indepth. I just know that there are also other factors involved that play an equally important role, if not more important. That's all.

Peace

[baby_mouse]

29. I have a more elegant solution

How about actively promoting a new culture in which male children are not viewed as more auspicious and fortunate than but *equal to* female children whilst simultaneously engendering a new understanding of the male experience that isn't focussed on violence and destruction?

That way you'd get rid of the ludicriously primitive and simplistic view of human beings that lies at the heart of the imbalance and get to the problems at the root instead of slapping stupid patches on it that will leak into new twisted social problems like women performing abortions on themselves?

Sound fair enough?

There should be a smilie in the lookup table for "COLD STARE".

[Zynx]

34. It takes much more than a couple of bills to change a culture. n/t

[baby_mouse]

37. Please clarify

Are you actually disagreeing with my original point?

I think patch slapping legislation does more harm then good, in the long run. Yes, it takes more than a couple of bills to change a culture, but (extended metaphor approaching) if a house was leaning to one side and the proposed solution was to carve all the furniture that was meant to go in it all lopsided and someone said: "Why don't we correct the tilt of the house rather than expend a lot of effort on strange furniture" and was met with "It takes more than one carpenter to build a house" as a response and the second opinion won out would you want to LIVE in that house?

If we give up at every point where good sense might make inroads into law we end up with a big, leaky mess. That's what I think.

And, although you already know this, I wasn't suggesting that we should try to influence the culture with bills.

And anyway, it's moot. :-( We don't even live there.

I just wish people would make more out of aiming for good sense. I think many of the world's problems arise from badly applied half-solutions to older problems.

[phylny]

55. I run into the same gender bias right here in the good ole US of A

We have three daughters, and I wish I had a dime for every numbnut who asked us if we didn't "really" want a son, if we "wish" we had a son, if we had been "trying" to have a son on our last pregnancy, or to the Queen of Numbnuts, who asked me after our third daughter was born if we were "really disappointed" that she wasn't a boy.

Someone I know recently said that she and her husband laugh at a relative because his "stuff" is obviously not strong enough to produce a boy. The man has three daughters.

So, if it's difficult to eradicate here, imagine how difficult it is to eradicate elsewhere.

Having said that, I love little boys (nephews and children I know) and am thrilled we have girls :)

[wickerwoman]

62. In terms of understanding the male experience,

the Chinese are already way ahead of us.

Yes, mothers and fathers hope for a son to support them and there are glass ceilings in most Chinese corporations the same as with American ones, but the Chinese do not have the same macho culture that we do in America.

Chinese boys and girls, men and women frequently develop strong platonic friendships without worrying about the men being called "pussies" for liking to spend time with women. Male friends hug freely, compliment each others' looks and hold hands without worrying about being called "gay". In Shanghai, the men do all the housework and shopping as an expression of love for their wives, not because they are "whipped". And boys who like reading and school work aren't bullied mercilessly for it and told they are worthless if they can't kick a ball around too.

So the culture of male entitlement still exists quite strongly, but not so much the problem of machismo and an association of masculinity with violence and destruction.

[MADem]

36. More cute Chinese babies for wealthy American families!!!

Avoid those stretch marks and swollen feet--buy a Chinese baby today!!! The only models available are females, and such a deal!!! With any luck, the stereotype will hold, and she'll bring home good grades AND turn out to be a dab hand in the kitchen with a wok!!!

You have to wonder what will happen when all of those boys who were kept come of age...I suppose they'll be horny as hell, and invade the US looking for gal pals. Time to start in on that Chinese for Beginners course???

It's already happening in India. The upside is, the ugliest girl from the "worst" family can marry "up," because there simply aren't enough females to go around. If you are a spinster in India, it's getting to the point where that is a choice, not a sentence!

[LibDemAlways]

38. Hey my repuke wingnut cousin

adopted a baby girl from China nine years ago. Acts like she did the kid the biggest favor in the world. Last time I saw her, the little girl was three and every time she misbehaved, my cousin threatened to send her back to China. Repuke family values.

[MADem]

40. I know a couple who adopted from China solely because

the missus "didn't want to spend nine months with swollen feet" and did not want to have to stop working (huge, huge paycheck--high viz political job) plus, all her friends had Chinese babies.

There are a load of American kids who are left to wallow in temporary care. Some of them are a bit older, have developmental problems, but hey...charity begins at home.

[American Tragedy]

50. I suspect people may be deterred by many stories of biological parents

in America "changing their minds", and ultimately being favored by the courts.

And what is wrong precisely with adopting from China? What do you think will happen to all of these rejected baby girls?

[MADem]

52. Nothing "wrong" per se

I just get bothered by a SUBSET of adoptive parents who want a docile, easy to care for, smart child that is cute and exotic. Again, I said a SUBSET. I do not intend to taint all adoptive parents with that brush. Having said that, I've met three sets of adoptive parents, urban dwellers all, dual income, rich as can be, who I would not let dog-sit for me--they went to China and purchased a commodity, not a kid. The kids don't seem too happy, either, frankly. No one talks to them at home except for the Central American nannies. On the plus side, the kids all have a good command of spanish....

I don't want to get into one of those internet pingpong fights over this issue...I simply related a perspective based on personal experience. If you want to adopt a Chinese kid, go for it.

[Jack_DeLeon]

41. but what about the mother's right to choose.

:eyes:

Usually any abortion thread is filled with people asking that question, this thread seems to be lacking in that.

[DemBones DemBones]

42. Good point. nt

[Tight_rope]

43. Wait....Is this suppose to be good news...

So you mean they will allow more girls to be born only for parents to leave them abandoned on the roadsides because the government only allows 1 child per couple. (Scratching my head...thinking is this really all that good of news).

[gardenista]

46. kick for Khephra

[gardenista]

48. .

[TXDemGal]

47. UNLESS China's provincial government also plan to institute

a "social security" policy, I believe the criminalization of sex selection abortion is likely to result in higher rates of female infant abandonment. :-( Nowhere near the number of infants abandoned every year in China are adopted, either domestically or internationally, so this likely means a higher number of institutionalized children. But I guess at least they'll be alive.

The "one child" policy is a contributing factor to infant abandonment. But perhaps equally responsible is that fact that rural people have no means of supporting themselves in old age, i.e., there is no uniform social security system. Rural Chinese depend on their (oldest) son to support them when they're elderly, hence the practice of female infant abandonment. Male children are also seen as carrying on the family name.

[progressivedancer]

49. YOU ARE ALL FORGETTING SOMETHING

How about the men that are born GAY. A chunk of that male population will become gay, FO SHO Y'ALL. This means that the ratio of AVAILABLE men to women is less drastic. But, then again, prolly most Chinese women would prefer to have gay men, but they can't. There will be a shit load of "Graces" in China.

[jmowreader]

53. Give that woman a cigar!

The "family name" thing is a major, major reason females are abandoned, aborted, adopted-away, <fill in the blank.> If you have a female child, your family disappears when the parents die, but a male child allows your family to continue.

As with all cases of unintended consequence, my question is "what did you expect to happen?" Tell people they can have one kid and they're going to want one kid who can retain the family name, one kid who will support them in their old age...one MALE child. Fortunately not all Chinese feel this way--if they did there wouldn't be any Chinese in China at all in sixty years--but enough do that we're discussing it.

[left15]

56. are all of you anti-abortion?

Abortion is between a woman and her doctor.

If she want's her only child to be a boy, that's her choice.

[Misunderestimator]

57. Having an abortion because you want a specific gender is NOT

something supported by PRO-CHOICE advocates. Why did you ask that inflammatory question? Pro-choice people usually don't call the other side anti-abortion.

[rainbow4321]

61. kick

[Scout]

64. kick