Britain has a massively liberal abortion policy – one which, much like the United States’, allows for abortions at essentially any point in pregnancy to preserve the “mental health” of the mother. This is a broad term that can mean essentially whatever the abortionist wants it to mean, without any need for specifics.
Just recently, analysis of Britain’s 2011 census data offers strong evidence that one of the things most risky to a mother’s mental health is a daughter.
Normal male-to-female birth ratio is approximately 1.06, meaning that there are approximately 106 boys born for every 100 girls born. Generally, when the birth ratio exceeds 1.08, this is due to some outside factor or cause, not a result of the natural reproductive process. In China, for example, census data from 2010 showed more than 118 boys born for every 100 girls – a figure well outside what is possible through natural reproduction, and one believed to be brought about through sex-selective abortions and infanticide.
Traditionally, this disparity has been attributed to China’s one-child policy and a family’s need to produce an heir, but Nick Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., made a chilling pronouncement more than four years ago. Eberstadt claimed that the widespread murder of infant girls reported in China is not truly the result of the country’s policy, but rather is a global trend. According to Eberstadt, gendercide is really “the fateful collision between overweening son preference, the use of rapidly spreading prenatal sex-determination technology and declining fertility,” resulting in the global destruction of baby girls.
The analysis of Britain’s 2011 census reinforces Eberstadt’s unthinkable proposition. Gendercide is a global problem, and it can, and does, happen in “civilized” nations, too. While Great Britain’s leaders have previously argued that there is no evidence that gendercide is taking place in the country, The Independent, a news outlet in the U.K., pointed out that all the studies conducted up until this point have considered only overall census data – an error in methodology that is likely to hide what is really taking place.
By contrast, a proper study will consider the birth ratio for second-born children, in families where the first child was a daughter. This is the real indicator, experts state, of whether gender is influencing a family’s treatment of baby girls. That examination, when it was done, revealed a very different story.
According to The Independent’s report, families from Pakistan and Afghanistan have a male-to-female ration of 1.1 to 1.2 in their second-born children, an impossible statistic if the parents are not manipulating outcomes. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Nepal, and India also showed substantial discrepancies in the birth rates for their second children. While statisticians believe that some factors outside of sex-selective abortions could account for some of these discrepancies, they cannot account for all of it, leaving an estimate of up to 4,700 girls “missing” from the above ethnic groups in Great Britain alone.
Great Britain is in good company, however. Lest it be thought that the United States or Canada is “not there yet,” it should be known that previous studies in both countries found similar discrepancies in these nations’ own birth rates among certain immigrant populations. The Canadian study went so far as to find that second-generation immigrants were even more likely to manipulate birth rates, and since the country has no laws at all pertaining to abortion, not even an attempt is being made to curtail the practice.
The case is somewhat different in the United Kingdom, the United States, and even China, where sex-selective abortions are technically prohibited by law and condemned, at least on paper. The reality, however, is that the liberal abortion policies in each country make it nearly impossible to truly prove a sex-selective abortion, and abortionists are generally all too willing to perform the procedure as long as payment is coming. Nearly two years ago, the Daily Telegraph released footage of an undercover investigation showing an abortionist offering to perform a sex-selective abortion, and Live Action’s own undercover investigation revealed widespread acceptance of the practice as well, with some abortionists and nurses even counseling women on how to circumvent the law.
Evidence continues to affirm Eberstatd’s claim – the problem truly is a global issue, and while public leaders may express revulsion at the idea of gendercide, and abortion advocates attempt to distance the industry from what is clearly taking place, the harsh reality remains that when the door of abortion is opened, and the value of life cheapened, there is no longer any real way to draw that “line in the sand” for why one human life matters and another does not.
Ideas have consequences. In Great Britain, those consequences come in the form of innocent little girls who will now forever be without a name or face. Let us hope they will at least not be forgotten.
