"Unnatural Selection"

In his review of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (by Mara Hvistendahl), Wall Street Journal book reviewer Jonathan V. Last writes, "...there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls...are missing from the world."

"In nature," Last writes, "105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120."

A more violent society as well as the sexual trafficking of girls and women are two of the consequences of gendercide.

When I began the adoption process about a decade ago, gendercide was one of the many issues about which I would learn more than I ever wanted to know. This knowledge left an unpleasant new awareness in me, a permanent lump in my throat. Bias against girls, of course, significantly affects international adoption.

In Love You More, I wrote:
I also knew that there were many, many orphaned girls in India. As in other parts of the world, boys are highly prized there. Boys serve as a sort of insurance policy for parents: they carry on the family name, inherit land and care for their aging parents. Girls are usually considered burdens to their families.Organizations such as the United Nations estimate that up to a million baby girls are aborted every year in India. Although it is illegal for medical staff to use prenatal technology to determine a baby’s sex, it is obvious that pregnant women and their ultrasound technicians ignore that law. India has practiced gender-based infanticide for centuries; tens of millions of girls have been killed as newborns. The only place girls outnumber boys seems to be in the nation’s orphanages, where baby girls are brought after being left in public places or in the cribs and cots left outside orphanage walls. Would our little daughter be one of the unwanted girls of India? The thought that our daughter would have every advantage and that she would be cherished as much as her brothers excited me. Adopting her would not stop, of course, what many call “female gendercide” in India, but it would save and empower one little girl. Our girl.

Reviewer Last makes the case that "If 'choice' is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against gendercide" and support abortion. He writes that the book -- unwittingly -- results in a strong anti-abortion message. (One could argue, by the way, that dialog about abortion may often be defined or guided by the notion of 'choice' in countries like ours, but the discussion is very different in other parts of the world. But that is a conversation for another day.)

I haven't yet read the book, but I feel confident that diving into a pro/anti-choice argument isn't the best -- or even really a useful -- response to Unnatural Selection.

Perhaps it would be more effective to talk about addressing the needs of girls and women in the developing world: educating girls, empowering women, and raising awareness in men and women - sensitizing cultures - about the consequences of sex bias, inequities, and gender-based violence.

Want to do just that? Check out World Vision's efforts to empower girls and women, promote girls' education, and to prevent child marriages and gender-based violence in Zambia. I've had the honor to meet Susan, whose story is told in this video and to see, firsthand, World Vision's work in Zambia. Both inspired me deeply.

Challenging and changing harmful cultural practices and empowering girls and women seem to me the best ways to address the tragedy of gender-based bias and violence -- and gendercide.