Private Totalitarianism, Writ Large

The Economist recently depicted the practice of sex-selective abortion as a Worldwide War on Baby Girls. Some parts of India and China now have up to 120 males born for every hundred females; in China’s Hubei province the ratio is 135 to 100. The Lancet reported, back in 2006, that there were 100 million girls missing from the world as a result of the practice which is, interestingly, more common among the wealthy and highly educated in India.

But even publications that have done a service by bringing these alarming gender imbalances to light tend to avoid fundamental judgments about abortion itself. The Economist reminds us of their official editorial position – the inane cop-out that that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Then, it carefully states that the “cumulative consequence for societies of such individual actions” has been “catastrophic,” which leaves the impression that they would be content if it were just more gender equitable. Without condemning the underlying act always and everywhere, one can only lament its uneven distribution in practice.