The influential British journal The Economist recently reported good news: it claims that “gendercide” – abortions obtained because prenatal testing indicated the child was the “wrong” sex, is down.  In most instances, “wrong” sex = “girl.”

If true, that’s certainly good news.  Pardon me, though, if I’m a bit skeptical because abortion numbers often epitomize what Mark Twain once called “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”  The truth is that many states (including the biggest abortion centers) don’t accurately report abortion numbers to the federal government.  Furthermore, when some states explicitly prohibited sex selection abortions while Roe reigned, those bars were circumvented by simply denying that the baby’s sex was the reason for the abortion.  Since “health” under Doe basically meant anything a woman and/or her abortionist said it was, sex selection abortions could simply be repackaged under another label.

Sex selection abortions occur in the United States, though not on the same scale as in some other countries.  They were especially prevalent in south and east Asia, where boy preference remains culturally strong.  Communist China’s “one-child” policy reinforced that bias: if you were authorized one baby, why “waste” the slot on a girl?  It’s why mainland China’s sex ratio is so skewed and men can’t find wives.  One study  suggests that, from 2000-2016, there were 24,000,000 fewer girls born worldwide than should have been.

Why is gendercide in decline?  The Economist offers various thoughts.  Boy preference must be falling because “sexist” ideas about women and their roles are declining.  That said, in aging East Asia, while a son may economically provide for elderly parents (though, with one boy among two parents and four grandparents, he’d better be a financial Mr. Atlas), a daughter is likely to provide more actual personal and tender care.  (“Sexism” dies hard).

The magazine also observed that societies are becoming more experienced with the “harms” that come from unattached “surplus men.”  Like it or not, marriage tends to temper men’s worst impulses.  If men can’t get married, society also bears that impact, often in terms of more crime.  (Maybe “sexist” ideas aren’t really so mythological?)  And there’s also the view that girls are “easier to raise,” which tends to meld with modern views that little boys are bigger problems, beset with ADHD, ADD, autism, disruptive behavior, etc.  Girls currently outpace boys academically.  Reversing Prof. Higgins’ famous line, “why can’t boys be more like girls?”

Finally, true to its name, The Economist notes that girl preference may be a modern trend, evidenced by adoptive couples willing to “pay extra” (a misrepresentative term, since adoption should not involve child buying) for a daughter and women using in vitro fertilization also tend to prefer girls.

If you don’t think that shopping for preferred characteristics is the new way in childbearing, consider what Jennifer Lahl has established.  You can obtain male sperm cheap – in some places, even free.  The surrogate who serves as a human incubator but does not contribute genes is often lauded for being “altruistic” (i.e., providing literal free labor) or paid sub-minimum wage sums.  But harvesting ova – especially from “quality” women – well, that’s gonna cost ya big time. 

Bottom line is that, boy-or-girl preference, actionable “preferences” mean a child of whatever sex is reduced to a commodity or product, held to and judged by criteria extrinsic to him/herself.  By “actionable” I mean “being able to do something about” that preference, a reality in our modern reproductive technology world.

Once upon a time, a couple might say they’d “like” a little boy or a little girl but, beyond their “liking,” they received and accepted what they got.  Today, that is not true.  The IVF recipient normally has multiple fertilized ova from which to pick and choose, sex being one of those choices.  And given the fact that abortion proponents never supported sex selection abortion bans, what’s to say that customers for sex selection abortions haven’t simply decided on a new “wrong” sex?  Yesterday, girls were an export of familial wealth; today, boys are un-woke incarnations of incipient “toxic masculinity.”  And, with increasingly sophisticated prenatal testing that identifies sex and abortion pills, how much “gendercide” may simply disappear because the abortion and/or its motivation falls under the radar?

It’s interesting   Early in its article The Economist says its cover article called this phenomenon “gendercide.” [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2010/03/04/gendercide ]  “Cide” comes from the Latin occidere, “to slay, murder, kill, slaughter.”  But how can you slay what’s not alive – unless The Economist was having a pro-life conversion?  That’s why sex selection abortion has always tied abortion advocates in intellectual knots.  Abortion orthodoxy says “choice” empowers women.  But if most abortions obtained out of a “choice” of sex selection terminate females, how is that girl-empowering?  Abortionists tried to wriggle out of that contradiction by calling the terminated fetuses “potential females.”  But if they’re potential, you can’t occidere what isn’t actually living, so the “gendercide” term fails.  Of course, nobody ever held the pro-abortion camp to intellectual consistency over this.

It is good news that female sex selection abortions may be declining.  One hopes that lethal discrimination against girls ends.  But the question is whether we have simply shifted the target victims of our discrimination.  Because as long as an unborn child’s continued existence is not self-justifying but depends on someone else’s imposed criteria – like the “right” sex – we really haven’t made progress.