The United Nations top agencies are actively promoting two root causes of Asia’s massive gender imbalance, charged an expert on population policies this week during a UN women’s conference.
Speaking on a panel during the UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women, Dr. Susan Yoshihara identified three reasons for the “missing girls” phenomenon in China, India and spreading to other nations. The root causes for the massive killings, she said, are access to technologies that facilitate abortion, a preference for sons, and the parents’ or governments’ desire for small families.
Between 33 million and 160 million girls are not alive today due to abortion or infanticide. “Girls are killed because they are girls. This is hardly a sign of women’s advancement,” said Dr. Yoshihara. Yet UN agencies tasked with promoting human rights, health, children and women aggressively promote two of the three reasons for sex selected abortions: small family size and abortion.
In a joint statement on “Preventing gender-biased sex selection,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Health Organization and UN Women falsely claim countries are obliged to address the sex selective abortions without denying access to abortion, claiming that would be “a further violation of their rights to life and health as guaranteed in international human rights treaties, and committed to in international development agreements.”
No obligation to abortion exists in international treaties or agreements.
The problem is dire. Overall, China has 120 boys for every 100 girls. In some parts of China, this number is 150 boys for every hundred girls that are born. In India, the “desirability for girls falls with each child,” with parents going “to extraordinary lengths to ensure their second child is a son,” said Dr. Yoshihara.
Decades ago, population control advocates funded by wealthy Western foundations implemented wide-scale programs in targeted countries like China and Japan. According to Yoshihara, they invested in sex-selection methods because they recognized the multiplying effects of culling girls from a population. Abortion became the preferred method of reducing populations since operatives could identify a pregnant woman easier than a woman who is thinking of getting pregnant.
The fall-out from population control programs carries heavy social and international security costs. Fewer women in societies fuel kidnappings, bride sharing, and human trafficking. The rapid drop in fertility means fewer people to sustain an increasing elderly population. Recognizing the impending lack of young people to fill out military ranks, government leaders may act aggressively toward other nations while they can.
In China, 500 women a day commit suicide, reported Tessa Dale of All Girls Allowed at the panel hosted by REAL Women of Canada. Tessa described cases of forced late-term abortions that kill both mother and child, and of a mother required to choose between handing over one of her two daughters or being sterilized. Wanting a son, she couldn’t decide. Government officials then took her younger daughter.
Toddler girls are kidnapped at 2 or 3 years old, while they are too young to figure out how to get home.
All Girls Allowed provides support for Chinese families who welcome their daughters, specifically working in villages with gender imbalances as high as 170 boys to 100 girls.
UN leaders present developing nations with false choices, noted Dr. Yoshihara. Countries must decide between development or children; promoting human rights (defined as including abortion) or having families.
“It is a deadly choice,” she stated.
