CHINA: Beijing's ban on sex-selective abortion

by Joseph A. D'Agostino

News Weekly, February 26, 2005

Communist China announced plans last month to criminalise sex-selective abortion, yet American and international feminist groups - quick to denounce restrictions on the "right to choose" in any country - did not complain.

Their silence is an extension of the silence they observe on China's official one-child policy, which since 1979 has forced women who have more than one child (or two children in many rural areas) to undergo sterilisation or forced abortion.

Feminists' implicit acceptance, and in some cases endorsement, of China's decision fully accords with the fundamentally statist, authoritarian world view of mainstream leftists.

They favour government regulation of almost everything, including abortion when it suits purposes they endorse such as population control. Their long-standing support forto manipulate the Chinese population.

China is missing girls - 40 to 60 million of them - which will leave an equal number of young Chinese men without wives. Chinese couples, allowed to have only one or two children, abort girls in the womb in order to try for boys later.

Boys are preferred for traditional cultural reasons, because they support their parents in their old age (girls become part of their husbands' families when they marry), because they extend the family line, and because in rural areas, they can perform more labour.

Between 117 and 119 boys are now born in China for every 100 girls when naturally speaking, 105 boys should be born for every 100 girls. (Mother Nature prefers boys by 5 per cent). The Chinese government has