The status of female children and female fetii in China and India has been referenced here before but I think it bears repeating. Talk about time bombs!

girls in China, girls not in China

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 25, 2001

Answers

This is thinly disguised anti-abortion propaganda.

-- (Naomi Wolf @ sisterhood.schmisterhood), August 25, 2001.

Lars, here's some interesting reading concerning this subject -

Female Imperilment in the Third Millennium

Snip -

In May 2001, author Salman Rushdie sent a message to the world via the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the London Guardian that women in India were on their way to becoming an endangered species. Contemplating a future where India's males might ask, "Where are my sisters?", Rushdie warned "beware of women," who, as he sees it, are their own worst enemy. "What should be done when a woman uses her power over her own body to discriminate against female foetuses?" he asks.

While Rushdie's fears for future generations may well be unexaggerated, his emphasis on women's "collaboration" distracts from the social realities that shape women's lives, conditions which often leave them powerless to determine the fate of their own bodies, and neglects the patriarchal roots of female imperilment which extend far beyond the borders of India.

Another Snip -

Three million out of the 12 million female infants born in India each year are dead before their 15th birthday; and amongst the three million children who die before their fifth birthday, girl deaths account for a staggering 75 percent of the total. But the dangers for India's females neither begin at birth, nor end with puberty. Like the majority of their sisters amongst the world's 1.5 billion poorest women, their perils are ever present from womb to tomb; 150,000 Indian women die annually from pregnancy-related causes. Underneath that 30 percent of the world's total maternal deaths lies a circle of brutal discrimination: girls who are not given the same nutrition as their brothers; girls who are less likely than their brothers to become literate, and if they do, may find themselves pulled out of school to become child brides; teenage girls weakened by pregnancies; and ultimately malnourished adolescent and adult females who become malnourished mothers, themselves at increased risk of death in labour, their infants at risk of low birth weight, and their girl babies, if they get to be born, and then get to live, destined to carry the burden forward into the next generation. Within that vicious circle, the mindset of girls and women is shaped by cultural and institutional notions of themselves as inferior citizens, and the girl child as a second class commodity. On that background, women themselves decide against bringing girls into the world to endure the cruel existence imposed by a strongly patrilinear society.

-- Debra (Thisis@it.com), August 25, 2001.

In Amazonia, we have the opposite policy. Only the healthiest males are kept for breeding purposes. The rest are sold to China and India.

-- (Xena@warrior.princess), August 25, 2001.

Debra--

I think it's not only a tragedy, not only despicable, but potentially a source of a future war. I'm glad that Rushdie is speaking out. I hope that international women's groups are working together to end this practice. Is this on the agenda for the upcoming Human Rights conference?

As a free-marketeer, I believe that India, China, etc will soon perceive the economic value of female human beings. As a Western man, I am appalled (and amazed) that those cultures do not already perceive the moral/social value of women.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 25, 2001.

Does that mean you are anti- abortion, Lars?

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), August 25, 2001.

Read twixt the lines. I have expressed myself on that before.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 25, 2001.

I see....timing is everything. If we can snuff em before they can protest, we can at least be credited with treating them all equal, where as the chinese are bigots. LOL!

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), August 25, 2001.

No, you don't see.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 25, 2001.

"As a Western Man, I am appalled (and amazed) the the Chinese don't recognise the value of women"

But I do see Lars, that you are as selective as the Chinese, and therfore a bit out of touch with reality.

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), August 26, 2001.

You think you see but you don't see, don't you see? I did not post this article to incite another abortion debate. But since you insist on being a pest, my personal position on abortion is this: I am pro-choice, where that choice is for life.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), August 26, 2001.

I see that you came back to this thread to be "bothered" by a pest.

It's a shame you aren't proud enough of your position to repeat it when asked.

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), August 26, 2001.