In a nutshell sex selective abortion is just what it sounds like, choosing to abort a child simply because it is not the correct sex. As it turns out the incorrect sex is female. National Geographic made a film called China's Lost Girls that first brought this situation to my attention. They were looking at girls being adopted overseas but ended up finding other situations including killing baby girls so that the family could try for a male child. This has caused a serious gender imbalance and they discovered that girls and young women were being kidnapped and forced to marry against their will. It was very well done and I recommend watching it. As of today (May 31st, 2012) it is still available for instant viewing on Netflix.
Now it turns out that a group called Live Action (http://liveaction.org/) has gone undercover in NYC and Austin, TX and found that Planned Parenthood is open to providing advice and abortion services for those who seek a sex selective abortion here in the USA. They have placed the video, called 'Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America', on their website. If they hadn't had the video evidence I don't know that I could believe that this is going on here in the US. A Planned Parenthood spokesperson told a reporter at the Huffington Post, "This spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America also told The Huffington Post that the organization condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender, but its policy is to provide “high quality, confidential, nonjudgmental care to all who come into” its health centers. That means that no Planned Parenthood clinic will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortions (Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois)." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/29/planned-parenthood-video_n_1552672.html)
As a father of two wonderful girls I cannot imagine deciding to terminate one of them just so I could try for a boy and I fear for their future if this trend continues and the gender imbalance that exists in China finds it's way here. Whether you are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice I believe you should find this trend disturbing. I know I do.
So what does this have to do with fighting the inner zombie? Well, if terminating a pregnancy just because you don't like the gender of the child isn't giving into the zombie inside I don't know what is.
***On a personal note***
For me personally I don't think anyone has the right to choose to terminate the life of an unborn child. God tells the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." and the Psalmist tells us in Psalms 139:13 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." To me it is clear that God doesn't create anyone by accident and that He has a plan for them. It is the height of presumption for us to think we know better than He who should be born and who shouldn't.
This is a tricky subject for me, so I'm going to stick to the gender thing alone. Which I think is deplorable.
ReplyDeleteIn China, the trouble as I understand it, is that there are strong cultural issues around male children that we don't understand here. The lack of understanding is on the same order of not understanding what real hand-to-mouth living is (like in Africa) or living in a war-zone is like (Syria, Israel, Afghanistan).
There is a huge cultural shift required in China in order for female children to be prized over male children. It's easy to be shocked at it while viewing it from different cultural values.
I still don't agree with it. I don't like it. I think it should stop. But it is significantly harder than saying it.
But for that to be happening over here seem horribly wrong just from a secular point of view. Where is our egalitarianism? Where are the women's rights advocates on this? Talk about treating women as less valuable! There are enough places in our country where women are looked down upon still -- there is no need to start that in the womb!!! Horrible, and disgusting.
Let's seen if I can be rare and state my thoughts concisely here. Instead of talking to my thoughts on allowing aborting, here's what I think it would take to at least greatly reduce abortions:
ReplyDelete1. Treat single-mothers with more respect
2. Improve the adoption system
3. Adopt more children
Treat single-mothers with more respect. No matter what circumstance made a mother single, she should be accepted and loved, not judged and whispered about. Susan Ashton has a great song on this topic.
Improve the adoption process. The adoption process sucks. As long as it sucks, people will avoid it like the plague unless their body, or pumping hormones into their body, fails them. There is a societal drive to have a CHILD OF MY OWN LOINS and that could be balanced by making adoption easier.
Adopt more children. James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Christians are screamingly good at the latter -- or at least good about screaming about it. Yet I know very few who have put as much energy into adopting. Adoption is treated as a "last resort" among many Christians I know instead of as fulfilling a Biblical instruction. I know some who flat out refuse adoption because the thought of a child not of their loins is repulsive to them. That needs to change.
It's easy to promoted abstinence and denounce abortion and then not do anything real about it outside of condemning people. That needs to change.
1. Love and accept single-mothers
2. Actively work to improve the adoption system
3. Temper the "child of my own" mentality and adopt
John, I don't really disagree with anything you've said. You're right about China and the Chinese who, to their credit, are working on changing peoples perception of females. Of course change is a hard thing to accept, especially when you have a few thousand years of tradition to deal with.
ReplyDeleteAs for James 1:27, if the church were doing it's job in this area the government wouldn't need to have welfare programs the size it does. I agree that the church needs to step up it's game in this area.