I'm really surprised at the board's attitude toward the

[leftyladyfrommo]

abortions of millions of female fetuses in other countries - so that families can have male heirs instead of females children that are a burden to the family.

I am pro choice but I don't think that the two issues are about the same thing at all.

To me this is an issue about women's right to survive and thrive. Their right to exist in a meaningful way in all cultures.

The wholesale destruction of females for no other reason than that they are female is devasting. And in most of those same countries it is also all right to destroy living females at whim. Need a new wife so that you can obtain a new dowry - just kill the wife you have.

[Roland99]

1. "Now playing in left field...."

hunh?

[liberal N proud]

2. The astounding fact is that our conservative leaders in Washington

condone such actions while coming out against abortion in the US they support China by continuing trade with them while they are practicing this behavior.
More Republican Hypocrisy

[liberalhistorian]

10. China is also

horrendously dictatorial and allergic to freedom, and is one of the worst world offenders when it comes to forced abortions, the very things the RW claim to be so much against. But because they're an economic powerhouse, and because American corporations and businesses are benefitting strongly from that, you hear nary a peep from them.

Surprising, isn't it? :sarcasm:

[MadHound]

3. And what do you propose to do about it?

If we impose sanctions, then everybody dies, men and women. Same if we withhold aid? About the only thing that I think can be done is to continue to raise the populations' awareness and conscienceness. But that is a long drawn out process.

[maxrandb]

24. We could also start by cleaning our own house

This is not an issue about abortion. It's not an issue about morality. It's an issue about the subjugation of woman. It's the attitude in other cultures that woman are a step below human. It's the attitude that woman are unequal. It's the attitude that woman just can't be trusted to make correct decisions on their own. It's the attitude that woman belong in the kitchen. It's the attitude that men want Martha Stewart in the kitchen, and Angelina Jole in the bedroom. In other words, it's about woman's role in our society.

The difference between Pat Robertson and the like, and the Taliban, is that one is a sharper dressed version of the other. One wears a suit, and one wears a turbin, but their attitudes about woman are pretty much the same; "subjugated, unequal, cookers, cleaners, and baby makers".

Before we start lecturing other countries about the rights of woman and minorities, we should stop electing people like Bush, Cheney, Delay, et al, and prevent them from putting people like Scalia, Roberts and Alito on the highest court in our land.

[William769]

4. You can't have it both ways.

either you are for it or against it (pro choice). Are the males holding them down & making them get abortions? If so that is a crime. If not we go back to the womans right to privacy & to choose which overrides anything IMHO.

[KnowerOfLogic]

27. Sure you can; as noted, these are two totally separate issues. But you

are correct that the women who go along with this are just as much to blame as anyone.

[LostinVA]

56. Not when the women are made to be their husbands

[Dorian Gray]

68. Is it really pro-choice

to allow for one child per family? I believe that it could be argued that sanctions against families with more than one child could count as state sponsored coersion to abort. That's not pro-choice. That's the government forcing citizens to abort or lose their government stipends and benefits that they would need to survive.

[Loonman]

5. What the heck can we do about it?

Invade China? India? Sure it's a real bad state of affairs, but there's really not much we can do as individuals.

[dogday]

6. Add to that -- the abominable treatment of Females

all of the world and you see that females do not have the same value as males. It is hard to change this attitude because it comes from the male to begin with....

[JHB]

7. What exactly is "the board's attitude" on this? I haven't seen it.

And everyone I know who favors broad abortion rights is also morally dead-set against such sex-selection abortions.

[DFWdem]

23. What's wrong with sex-selection abortions?

After all, it's not like the woman is aborting a baby. It's just a clump of cells, like a tumor. What does it matter what the reason is for the abortion?

[tenshi816]

35. By the time a woman

if far enough along to know what sex her baby is, it's no longer "just a clump of cells, like a tumor". Sheesh.

[DFWdem]

37. I know, I was making a point

I forgot to add 'sarcasm' to my post. I was referring to the attitudes of many people who are pro-choice to the point that they will state "It isn't a baby, it's a fetus, a clump of cells!" in their effort to convince themselves that abortion at any time for any reason is perfectly fine.

[NotThatNolan]

47. You sure about that?

You can do a simple blood test with an at-home kit and know the baby's gender by five weeks. Do you expect me to believe that the pro-choice crowd is against abortions after five weeks?

[tenshi816]

54. We don't have anything like that in the UK.

When did these tests come out in the States? What are they called? How accurate are they? Is there a study anywhere you can cite about the reliability of such a test or a link where I can find out more?

Edited for clarity.

[LostinVA]

58. You aren't getting it, either

It's not an abortions issue, it's a women's rights issue.

[DFWdem]

63. No, I get it

Certainly some of the women were coerced into aborting their female babies, but certainly otherschose to abort their female babies. However, it goes back to the core question: should abortion be available at any stage of a pregnancy for any reason? If you're truly pro-choice then you must answer that question in the affirmative.

[CJCRANE]

74. That's not the core question..

that's like saying: if you're pro-gun should you be allowed to have any weapon for any reason?

[LostinVA]

57. There was a recent thread where "this board's attitude"

was very much showing regarding this issue. Or at least a surprising amount of posters on that thread. I know where she's coming from.

[liberalhistorian]

8. You make some very good points,

and I agree that they are devastating. The thing is, I'm not sure a lot of people here even know about it; I think they'd be just as upset as you if they did.

The problem, though, is that people will simplistically link the issues of abortion in this country and what you describe even though, as you say, that's not the point. Abortions in places like China and India are often forced, against the will of the parents or the mother, because male, and not female, babies are wanted. That's different from people choosing whether or not they want to be parents.

The other problem is that a case could be made that such a situation represents the "slippery slope" argument. In other words, we've allowed abortion by choice and now it's becoming forced, against the mother's or parents wills, and especially against female babies. There may very well be a grain of truth to that.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. Pro choice doesn't mean pro abortion

The choice is there to empower women and make it so that they aren't under the thumb of some man, but that they have control over their own bodies. The fact that women in places like India abort females is not something I agree with, for the reason that I don't think it is a free choice made by many of these women, but one imposed upon them by their families.

Historically, female babies were not considered important enough to raise-ancient Roman law said that the families were only required to raise the eldest daughter, and exposing female babies to the elements was common practice in pre-Islamic Arabia. Unfortunately, the anti-woman bias has been ingrained in some cultures despite holy books teaching that women should be honored and respected.

There has been an interesting outcome of this gender selection, however; in some places in India, the number of available brides has shrunk so that it is difficult for men to find brides without paying a hefty dowry.

[leftyladyfrommo]

16. In China the women in rural areas are kidnapped

and sold as slaves. Sometimes their tendons in their ankles are severed so that they can't escape.

Why do we tolerate the treatment of 50% of the population this way? We don't have to start wars to end it. We just need to cut the money we seem to so freely give away to countries that practice female infanticide and other like barbaric practices.

There are so many abuses of women around this world that it staggers the imagination. And all we seem to be able to do is say "oh, well." Other things are more important - like trade? Like diplomatic relations?

I don't think so.

[bloom]

40. I think it is interesting to think

of the long term implications.


What would make sense is if the remaining women were more valued - since there would be fewer of them - hence the huge dowries.

It would also make more sense that women would be the ones with several husbands instead of the reverse.

But that would probably never happen (male control issues).



From a strictly natural point of view - people messing with nature in this way - controlling the sex of who gets born - seems like one more way the world is getting out of balance. People wanting to control things that are best left to chance. It's bound to lead to problems.

[tenshi816]

62. Oh, well, you know...

wars to fight, democracy to spread... :sarcasm:

The US government wasn't worried about Afghan women under the Taliban until after 9/11. Unfortunately it's the same with Chinese or Indian or Pakistani women.

[Pathwalker]

11. The abortion issue is really a smokescreen,

to destroy American's right to privacy, since Roe V Wade codified that right into law. The Republicans don't believe in that right, so they use abortion to get people to surrender this right without realizing that.
I find it ironic that places like India, where what you describe has happened, now have TOO MANY MEN. So, they will have to change their attitudes - eventually or end up without females.


PS: What is "this Board's" attitude?

[leftyladyfrommo]

18. I had posted on this yesterday and was shocked by

the response.

I guess it just never occurred to me that people would think that abortion is abortion is abortion. Therefore, if it is a woman's right to have an abortion then the aborting of millions of female fetuses would therefore be all right.

[Misunderestimator]

32. Shocked by one response? And that makes it the "board's attitude?"

Or perhaps you are referring to some other thread that this one... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=118921

[leftyladyfrommo]

38. This topic is such an outrage to me.

I guess I should say "i'm sorry" if I'm being over the top.

To me its more important than any political question. More important than any other topic.

[Misunderestimator]

39. And there I would have to disagree... there are atrocities of all forms

happening around the world. I don't think that we can stack them up and compare them and come up with what is the worst of them. And until we change our government and elect people who care about such things... not our current one by a long shot... we cannot do a damn thing. The best we can do is exactly what we are doing... which is to work to elect progressives, to criticize and expose the liars and murderers in our own country. What would you propose we do, other than be horrified?

[fasttense]

12. You are correct. It is a sick, destructive

practice to systematically kill off your female population.

But men and women have been doing it for thousands of years. I remember reading a letter from a Roman soldier. His wife was pregnant when he left for the front. It had been about eight months since he had seen her. He wrote if the baby is a boy praise the lord but if it is a girl, leave it at the river bank.

So women and girls have been treated like crap for thousands of years all over the world. They are still treated like crap.

That's why I believe our founding mothers have given this country so much. And yet people like Limpball continue to ridicule any woman who dare stand up for her feminist heritage.

[Greyhound]

13. Is it pro choice or isn't it?

I don't see how you can favor choice, except if you don't agree with that choice. This is cultural and self-correcting, so leave it alone.

[Bluerthanblue]

14. infanticide is the other option...I'd sooner see

a life not come into the world, than have babies allowed to starve to death, or be poisoned, murdered, or neglected because they had the misfortune of being born without a penis-

Look into how some fringe groups in India and Pakistan deal with their female offspring. Dowrys, and the notion that the 'male seed' is inherently more valuable than a woman, is something we cannot legislate, force, or coerce other cultures to abandon.

Have you noticed how many Chinese adoptees in america are female??? Nearly all of them, and that isn't a 'coincedence'-

Women have been struggling from the begining of time, for equality- for the right to exist, we still do- even here in america. We can't 'fix' something in other countries we haven't 'fixed' in our own homes.

[Bluerthanblue]

20. here is a 'telling link'-

Traditionally, unwanted girl children are fed milk laced with either yerakkam paal or paddy husk as soon as they are born. The husk method is more cruel; it slits the tender gullet with its sharp sides as it slides down the tiny throat. The more 'modern' families use pesticides or sleeping pills. Sometimes, they just suffocate the infant with a pillow.

Alligundam was an eye-opener in many ways. The families there were aggressively protective of their right to eliminate their female children. An elderly Thevar, after giving me a long lecture on the need for female infanticide, suddenly shouted angrily, "Who told you we kill penn sisus (female infants) in this village? Go and see... you will find at least one girl child in every house."

What he omitted to say was that the next... and the next... and the next would be eliminated. The families believed that one girl was needed to "light the lamp" in each home; the others were intrusions who just had to go. They wanted more boys, so family planning was not an option. Karuppayee told me, "It is better they die than live like me."

http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/oct/24spec.htm

[hogwyld]

59. That's the most troubling story I have ever read

It truly shows the depths of human depravity. I didn't know that people could be so cruel and heartless. This has got to stop now!!!

[Bluerthanblue]

64. I learned about this back in

the early 90's - I couldn't believe people weren't as devistated by the practice as I was. A friend of mine had become involved with an 'orphanage' which was started to give girls a safe haven- We met when I was trying to fund-raise for relief efforts towards the refugee children of the Hutu/Tutsi massacre going on in Burundi-

This world is so full of sorrow, oppression, desperation.... to know that america is causing more, by choosing to do terrible things for oil, money, power and greed sickens me.

Thanks for reading the link- If more people understand, even the things that hurt to know, it is a step towards change.

Peace,
blu

[hogwyld]

69. No, Thank You!

for sharing that link, and expanding my knowledge and understanding. While it was very sad to read, it has energized me to do something such as find out ways to help fund the orphanages.

[htuttle]

15. You're talking about a woman's rights issue...

...not an abortion/choice issue.

Those same women forced to have abortions also generally cannot own property, get a divorce, go to post-grade-school educational institutions, and in some places, cannot even drive a car. Their problem is not so much that they are forced to have abortions, but rather that they aren't even seen as 'persons' under the law.

And, btw, the Republicans don't have any problem with that (cf. Northern Marianas Islands -- a US territory, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc...).

[Tsiyu]

17. And what is the "board's attitude"????

Have you polled everyone here about this issue?

I believe most of us would say we are shocked and horrified by the way women are treated in other places.

But we damn straight can't do a thing about it now - not while our rights and liberties are being hauled away in C-130's marked "GOP."

When we have true equality and representation in our own country, we can affect change elsewhere.

Of course you should speak out, donate time to causes you deem worthy, but the fight of our lifetimes is right here right now.

[Misunderestimator]

19. The "board's attitude" ? Links please?

:shrug:

[leftyladyfrommo]

22. See #18 above

I guess I live in a bubble.

I also think we should withold any dollar support for countries that do not support anti-cruelty messures for children, old people and animals.

Does that make me a super radical? I had no idea I was far out of the mainstream.

[Bridget Burke]

26. First, we need to ensure the USA does not practice cruelty...

To its own children & old people.

Making food, a place to live, a good education & health care beyond their reach is only a more subtle form of cruelty.

[Misunderestimator]

28. Do you mean this thread of yours:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=118921

Because I don't see the attitude you're referring to, aside from ONE single post, certainly not reflective of the entire community or the "board's attitude." Can you point to something more specific that leads you to believe that this is a widely held opinion? I cannot imagine ANY real member of this community not being appalled by the same things that horrify you.

[EFerrari]

29. #18 is a post of yours. This board has no monolithic

view on this topic.

[fujiyama]

55. Your idealism is admirable

but I'm not sure about withholding dollar support. As of now India and China don't receive much in aid. Hell, at this point China owns a large part of our debt.

While this may not bring about immediate change, increased trade and the introduction of LIBERAL ideas into the East (yes, those conservafuckers should realize that backward ideas are generally conservative), have improved standards somewhat for women. For example, I know in India (atleast in urban parts), many women are entering the sciences and engineering. More women are also completing the equivalent of K-12 as well as getting bachelor degrees.

The changes are not happening as quickly as they should and as the articles above show, they aren't happening in all parts of the country, but I don't think isolating these countries will improve the standards much for women.

That said, all trade agreements signed should definetely have labor, environmental, and human rights standards written in. There should be no exceptions.

[sandnsea]

21. That's not self-direction

Choice is about a woman's ability to direct her own future. Being forced by the culture to have 11 children, or only boys, is still a forced decision. Neither is the ability of the woman to truly direct her own future. I don't know what others have been saying, but maybe they are actually anti-abortion anyway, or just confused about women's rights to begin with.

[Bridget Burke]

25. The countries that allow these practices will pay the price.

The gender imbalance will cause problems in the future. I hate this reason for abortion--but is the more traditional infanticide better? Do you propose we invade these countries to stop the practice?

Our country is harming women's health & rights by banning support of any health program that even mentions abortion as an option. Therefore, women & their children are paying the price for Bush's gesture to the Religious Right. I think this is a more useful target.

[leftyladyfrommo]

34. They won't pay any price at all.

They haven't paid any price for thousands of years. It has gone on that long, I'm sure.

And probably the only ones who will stop it will be women. I am getting the feeling that men simply don't "get it."

Sorry. But this whole thing is just appalling to me. 50% of all of the intellectual talent of this world is simply being squandered. And for absolutely no good reason at all.

[LisaL]

48. It was done for thousands of years, you are sure?

How do you think they knew that fetus was female thousands of years ago?
When do you think ultrasound was invented? Do you think ultrasounds existed in stone age? They will pay, they are already started to pay. They will have a lot more men than women. The men won't be able to get married.

[JVS]

51. Do you think they knew how to look at a baby's crotch and leave...

a girl in the forest thousands of years ago?

[LisaL]

52. I thought we were talking about abortions, not infanticide.

OP sure complained about abortions. The infanticide is the whole another issue altogether.
:eyes:

[JVS]

53. 6 of one 1/2 dozen of the other

The societal impact of killing infant girls and aborting them because they would be born girls is the same: less girls.

The technology just gets you around the whole infanticide taboo

[zalinda]

30. I read some where that when a woman

has choices of birth control, the birth rate goes down and women become more on an equal footing with men. I don't mean birth control as abortion, but as pills, diaphragm and the like. The Bushies though, are curtailing the distribution of birth control. Could this be the reason?

Zalinda

[Catherine Vincent]

31. please correct the spelling of "attitude" in your heading

Thanks.:)

[truthInCO]

33. What's the difference?

Others have said it in more obtuse ways, but basically what's the difference? If you elect to have an abortion because you don't want the child, why can't you elect to have an abortion because you don't want a girl? You want restrictions on why and when? Can't have your fetus and eat it to. Choice is choice. A blob of tissue doesn't have any inherent rights.

Did you see last nights Nightline? That doctor; what a lean, mean, unabashed abortion machine. He even stated that he believes life begins at conception and taking out those fetuses was the most "emotionally fulfilling" job he could imagine. I don't think he'd care what your reason was, girl or boy.

State sponsored, or enforced abortions are an egregious crime. But if it's purely a woman's choice, it should be just that.

[leftyladyfrommo]

36. What if it is a culture's crime? Is that OK?

[truthInCO]

41. Who are we judge another culture?

If it's a cultural norm, who are we to interfere or judge? If it's coerced or forced, then it's wrong in my eyes, but what am I going to do about it? There are no absolutes, this is the world we live in.

[Horse with no Name]

42. I believe that you are confusing issues here

I am pro-choice. The woman should be able to decide of her own free will whether or not she wants to carry a child to term.
What is happening in China is selective sex genocide. The women have no say about what is done to their bodies, it has to do with the law.
It is the same fight that we are fighting here to keep choice intact.
Make no mistake.
When the government asserts its right to pick and choose that women cannot have control over their bodies, even though RIGHT NOW and today the political climate is to save the fetuses, with precedent set there may be a time in the future when the government can assert that women MUST abort their children. Once a woman's choice is removed out of the equation, it leads to broader implications.
Pro-choice is NOT about abortion. It is about a woman's right to do with her body what is right for her without the interference of anyone, in particular the government.

[LisaL]

49. India does it too, and they don't have "child limit" laws.

It has everything to do with the fact that their cultures values males more than females, not any laws. Even with one child law, why would chinese think having a male child is so much better than having a female child, so much that female fetus should be aborted?

[Horse with no Name]

50. Because the mother's aren't the ones making these decisions

It's the men. The mother's have no choice.
You said it yourself. Their culture values men above women.
The men make the laws, they make the rules.
Just like they want to do here.
It's all about choice. I support a woman's choice to have a baby as fervently as I support a woman's choice not to have one.
That's why I am not going to give up my choice without a fight.

[Bluerthanblue]

66. oh, but they are- Sadly, not truly out of

'choice' but rather out of 'mercy'- or a twisted kind of desperation. Not allowing a girl to be born, is better than having her born only to be killed as an infant (I posted a link above) or to watch her be mistreaten.

Have you read "Beloved"? I hate to admit this, but I SO understood why Sethe did what she did to her children- there ARE fates worse than death.

I believe we agree HWNN- a 'choice' between a life of hell and stopping that life before it enters the world, is hardly a 'choice'-

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

43. Are there action items associated with this issue or is this just a rant?

:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

44. Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right -- just a Right Wing

It is a fundamental value proposition of Democracy that the People inherit both the benefits and costs of their own decisions, be they wise or folly. Societies wherein gender bias in child bearing and rearing also often show a long history of violent conflict (war) wherein males have been (almost?) exclusively employed ... and killed. What I'm saying is that such biases don't exist in a vacuum - they coexist with other societal/cultural biases. These coexisting biases are found in political enfranchisement, access to education, property rights, economic justice, life expectancy (health care), and other areas. Just as these biases coexist, so must their amelioration be coordinated - not with some autocratic heavy hand but with education and enlightenment. It's essential, imho, that the People have universal access to education and information, of all kinds. Justice must be nurtured, not imposed.

Call me insane (a nut?) but it seems to me that there's some (perhaps small?) 'improvement' in terminating a pregnancy as opposed to drowning the female infant in a sack thrown into the river.

We're just not that long out of the Dark Ages. The overwhelmingly vast majority of humanity's history has been driven by fear, oppression, and ignorance. The vast majority of humans that have ever lived on this planet lived foreshortened lives on the thin edge of survival. In America and the "West," we're often without a clue that most of the people in this world still, at best, dream of exiting those Dark Ages. First things first.

[JVS]

45. I believe this is what the Vatican refers to as the "culture of death"...

but they can take their opinion and stick it.... hey hey kids.

But what can be done? On one hand they're aborting daughters which seems pretty damned misogynistic, but on the other hand once you start saying that an abortion needs to have a "good" (i.e for reason other than gender of the fetus) reason you've created a system that could easily be modified to forbid abortions in all but the most extreme circumstances. Doing that is no favor to women either. So it's a wash there.

Add to the mix the realization that if some very highly populated countries where this seems to be the trend actually succeed in getting less women ( and hence wombs from which children spring) in each generation, they've succeeded in one of the best possible methods of population management. Imagine if we had only 25% women in a population, it would be possible for each woman to have 4 kids before the population started growing.

I don't think it will be easy to tell these countries to stop this.

[LisaL]

46. It's devastating, but there is no solution.

What would you do, forbid abortions if fetus is female? The countries that do it will pay when they have all these single man unable to get married.
They will get what is coming to them.

[leftyladyfrommo]

75. What would happen if we could raise the status of all women

That is what needs to be done about it.

If we could do that probably 75% of the world's problems would just fanish.

[Bluebear]

60. What exactly is the board's attitude on the subject? nt

[stepnw1f]

61. They Don't Give a SHit about Life

They just hold onto this issue to prop up an appearance that they do. IT's ALL BULLSHIT! These are the most destructive ant-life backward thing fanatics I have ever seen before. Nothing they say has any merit. It's all cultist voodoo political bullshit.

[High Plains]

67. Who is the object of your rant?

[stepnw1f]

71. Anti-Abortionists (nt)

[TimeChaser]

65. I don't support it at all, but it's preferable to infanticide, IMO eom

[tenshi816]

72. Infanticide is a reality too.

A few years back there was a documentary in the UK (I can't remember now if it was on the BBC or another network) about what they called "the dying rooms" in China, where unwanted newborn baby girls are placed along with many others to starve to death, unmourned and unloved.

[JitterbugPerfume]

70. It is mysogeny

more than population control

it is a deep seated hatered of women

[rman]

73. I think most of "the board" is not even aware of the issue,

let alone that "the board" has an attitude towards it.

[sendero]

76. I don't have the words.....

.... to express my dismay at this practice. It is literally a form of culturally-sanctioned genocide IMHO.

The irony is, these societies are raising generations of precious males who will never have the one thing that most males need, a female companion. They are going to be a miserable bunch.