Earth Needs Women

I thoroughly enjoyed this book review in Monday's Wall Street Journal: "The War Against Girls." Mara Hvistendahl's "Unnatural Selection" sounds the alarm about the unsustainable and ominous gender imbalances caused by parents seeking baby boys over baby girls. This happens a lot in China, given the desire for a son to carry on the family name, as well as the severe financial penalties for having more than one child; as ultrasounds have become more readily available, abortions of girls have spiked, leading to some ridiculous boy-girl ratios in some villages.

Of course I cannot help but think of an unwanted Chinese baby girl who was not aborted but was rather brought to term six years ago, abandoned, and then through the wonders of the adoption process (and by the sovereign hand of the Almighty) introduced into our family. By the grace of God, Jada did not become one of an estimated 163 million girls not born due to abortion since the 1970's, when the developing world first had access to gender identifying technology in utero.

The book review also duly notices how the author twists herself in knots calling attention to this atrocity while still upholding a woman's right to have an abortion. Apologies to my many friends who are pro-choice, but you are all just plain wrong on this issue, and Hvistendahl's verbal gymnastics betray the difficulty of holding a position that considers the intentional destruction of a fetus a viable option.

If we hold life to be sacred, as sacred as it gets, then I fail to see how one can differentiate between ending it because you don't like its gender, because it is physically or mentally defected, or because you simply don't want it to see the light of day. I know a lot of women, and some are worthier than others, but I'm prettier sure that if any or all of those 163 million aborted in the last 40 years had made it to life, the world would be a better place and not a worse place for it.