War on Baby Girls: AEI event

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | July 12, 2011

Mara Hvistendahl and Nicholas Eberstadt discussed Hvistendahl’s new book, Unnatural Selection, on sex-selective abortion at an American Enterprise Institute event on 16 June.

Even for those who have followed the issue closely, it is worth hearing Hvistendahl’s findings that the strongest link between sex selection in countries of diverse cultural practices–such as Azerbaijan and China–is not son preference per se, but rather the rise of fertility control and high abortion rates. Both she says can be linked to the legacy of US population control policies in the 1960s. The result is 160 million missing women in Asia and worldwide (a number greater than all the women in the US).

Right now, missing girls under the age of twenty number some 50 million according to census data, Eberstadt says. The practice occurs every day in the United States, he says. This is true even among Japanese-Americans, whereas the practice seems unexplicably–and uniquely–absent in Japan.

Hvistendahl says sex selection has already had profound effects–especially trafficking and bride buying–in the countries where the practice first emerged (Korea and Taiwan). Enclaves of foreign women have sprung up around major cities there, and the money from exporting daughters has in turn changed economics and demographics back in their countries of origin. What is more, the “imported” brides have not reversed the problem. In fact, these families have at least in one study been shown to have even higher rates of sex selective abortions than other families.

Eberstadt says that the only country to reverse the incidence of the practice–South Korea–did so not due to any law but because faith communities and other groups stigmatized the practice in that country (much like the anti-smoking campaign in the US stigmatized a once glamorous practice.)

Hvistendahl says there is almost no international response to the crisis, and blames the UN Population Fund and reproductive rights groups for forestalling badly needed action. The civil society groups in India which are working on the issue often wrongly focus on poor families and villages, she says. The problem there is often associated with wealthy classes.

Responding to a question about why there is now such high profile return to talk about over population (LA Times, NY Times) causing climate change and higher fuel costs, Eberstadt identified an “anti-natal ideology.” Out of 200+ US demographic and health surveys taken worldwide, his research team has found, only 7 asked about sex preference of the next child, and three of them were done by the government of India and not funded by USAID. In other words, the people who should be providing the evidence are ignoring the issue.

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