A guest post by Becky Behrends, M.D. and Vice President of Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com)
Did you know that between 1970 and 2017, there were 45 million “missing” female births due to prenatal sex selection? This information came from a British Medical Journal Global Health in-depth study in 2021. It was based on examining 3.26 billion birth records.
Over 95% of these missing births were in China or India.
What about the United States?
Sex-selective abortions are abortions performed for the purpose of eliminating an unborn child of an undesired sex. Usually, females are the “undesired” sex. Only seven states in the U.S. ban sex-selective abortions.
Pro-life members of Congress introduced in 2012 what is known as the PRENDA act for Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act. This bill was revised by Republicans in Congress in January 2022 (H.R. 6465) and reintroduced. It has yet to pass both the House and the Senate.
Those who advocate the bill say that the U.S. already bans sex discrimination, and PRENDA would simply extend this protection to females in the womb.
Opponents say it is unnecessary because abortions based on sex- selection are rare. So, not worth passing a law to ban it.
But they don’t tell you the whole story.
A pro-life organization, Live Action, went undercover to various Planned Parenthood clinics in 2012 to determine if sex-selective abortions were being performed. They indeed were with the only reason for them was the “sex of the baby.”
Watch:
Also, the way in which the ratio of male to female births is determined by looking at the sex ratios at birth or SRB. Globally, there are 103 male births per 100 female births. But, in Asian nations, the SRB rises from 123 males to 100 females, an astounding imbalance! China and other Asian nations are now banning doctors from telling women the sex of their unborn children.
If SRB data is examined for the U.S., foreign-born populations show a similar preference for male children. Not so for U.S.-born parents.
SRBs have increased since the 1990s in the U.S.
There are other sex-selective methods to be concerned about. There is Preimplantation Genetic Diagnostics or PGD, which is also known as “sperm sorting.” PGD is when the doctor tests the sperm to see if it has an X or Y chromosome. A family may choose only sperm with a Y chromosome, and thus more likely; a male embryo will result. In addition, with PGD, doctors can create multiple embryos in order to test them for genetic abnormalities, which also will reveal the sex of the baby. Unfit or unwanted embryos, such as ones with the “wrong sex,” can be eliminated. Because of this, Canada and the UK, and many other nations won’t reveal an embryo’s sex in in-vitro fertilization. Many people from these nations thus travel to the US, Italy, Mexico, or Thailand to get gender-select abortions.
The United Nations and WHO oppose sex selection for non-medical reasons. They have said the following:
“Sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal, and social issues. Such as the distortion of the natural sex ratio leading to a gender imbalance, and it can reinforce discriminatory and sexist stereotypes towards women by devaluing females.”
In the summer of 2022, a gay couple sued a fertility clinic because they had “ordered” two boys but received a girl instead.
Feminist groups should be outraged over this trend of devaluing and/or eliminating females.
China faces what has been called a demographic time bomb. In 2021, it was reported that China had 35 million more single men than women. This is primarily in rural areas. In addition, China’s birth rate has been dropping. At the same time, the population is aging.
China’s disastrous one-child per-family policy led to this crisis. Chinese officials responded by allowing two children per family, and now they have increased that to 3 children since 2021.
Meanwhile, millions of Chinese men are experiencing significant mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, suicide, and aggressive behavior over their inability to find women to marry, have children and enjoy family life.
However, in Chinese urban areas, men are choosing not to be married, and women don’t want to have children.
All of this spells significant trouble going forward. Not enough replacement population of young people to take care of the elderly and aged.
We, likewise, in America have “aging demographics” which is going to hit the country “like a ton of bricks,” according to Biden’s Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo.
It does not help to devalue female babies and abort them and thus face the demographic fallout that will occur.
More importantly, from a moral standpoint, it is just plain wrong and evil. Let us call it what it is!
