We know it is a bit late, but if you missed this article, it is a must read.
It is the March cover story for The Economist—“Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls”—and everyone should read it for two reasons:
- To learn more about a hugely important issue affecting millions of girls around the world.
- To witness another writer maneuver around having to address abortion as what it really is—murder.
This maneuvering is most evident in The Economists’ opinion piece on the article.
They do an excellent job honestly addressing the magnitude of the problem in the piece. They write,
“It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.”
And they are correct. The numbers are huge. They continue later on to even address some of the causes.
“In fact the destruction of baby girls is a product of three forces: the ancient preference for sons; a modern desire for smaller families; and ultrasound scanning and other technologies that identify the sex of a fetus.”
But notice what is missing from the list of contributing forces. No where in that list does it mention that unlimited access to the primary murder weapon—abortion—might have contributed to the problem. The article does concede that gendercide is an issue, even that abortion is used in the process, but never does it say that unlimited access to abortion is the major contributor to the mass murder of millions of baby girls.
That is how powerful the ideology of choice truly is. Had the murder weapon been a gun, the article would have ended with a bold call for gun control, but the sanctity of a woman’s right to choose prevents abortion from even being mentioned among the contributing forces.
The article continues to miss the point entirely when it offers its solution. According to The Economist, the key to ending the abortion of millions of girls is not to limit abortion, but rather, to foster respect for women:
“And all countries need to raise the value of girls. They should encourage female education; abolish laws and customs that prevent daughters inheriting property; make examples of hospitals and clinics with impossible sex ratios; get women engaged in public life—using everything from television newsreaders to women traffic police. Mao Zedong said ‘women hold up half the sky.’ The world needs to do more to prevent a gendercide that will have the sky crashing down.”
Yes, these are hugely important steps in reducing the problem, but a little gun control might help as well.