The Gendercide Investigation: Sex-Selection in America
Gendercide: The systematic killing of girls.
When it comes to sex selection and gendercide, most people think of China, India, and other cultures that are known to prefer boys over girls. But studies show that this unethical practice is happening right here in America.
Sex-selection abortion is defined as “an abortion undertaken for the purpose of eliminating a child of an undesired sex.” Sex-selection can also be achieved through sperm-sorting and embryo-selection during the process of “assisted reproduction.” However, sperm-sorting and embryo-selection are expensive and not widely available; therefore, most sex-selection takes the form of abortion.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen estimated that as early as 1990, approximately 100 million women were demographically missing worldwide due to sex-selection abortion, female infanticide, and other such practices. Current estimates now put that number at 200 million missing women and girls globally.
U.S. Census data and national vital statistics show that indeed, sex-selection is a growing problem in America. Americans are employing sex-selection techniques in their reproductive decisions. A review of census and birth records by Professor Jason Abrevaya of the University of Texas showed that Americans have sex-selected thousands of baby girls.
Sex-selection abortion represents the most violent form of discrimination against women, victimizing two women at one time: mother and daughter. Many women are forced or coerced to have sex-selection abortions, and their daughters suffer the fatal consequences.
Although 9 out of 10 Americans oppose sex-selection abortion, abortions based on gender are neither illegal nor uncommon in our country. Many other industrialized countries have either restrictions or a ban on sex-selection, yet the United States does not – despite our continuous condemnation of other countries that permit the practice.
The mission of Protect Our Girls is to raise awareness on the issue of sex-selection abortion and to call for a nationwide ban on sex-selection abortion in the United States. This campaign focuses on bringing an end to sex-selection abortion in America and around the world.
Undercover in Texas
AUSTIN, May 29 — Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.
Undercover in New York
NEW YORK, May 31 — Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger clinic in New York City helping a woman determine if her preborn child was female so she could have a sex-selection abortion. The video is second in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.
Undercover in Arizona
The footage shows two NAF members, Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix and the Tucson Women’s Center in Tucson, promising to ignore the law and perform a sex-selective abortion and coaching a woman to lie on official paperwork to conceal the illegal abortion.
At the Tucson clinic, the surgical assistant Francisco tells the woman, “We could lose our license,” but agrees to cover-up her sex-selective abortion. “I’ll just forget about it,” he says, “But just be sure not to mention it” to the abortion doctor–“Don’t even mention it to him.”
Sex-selective abortion is a felony in Arizona. No one may knowingly perform a sex-selective abortion in Arizona, or solicit or accept money to do so.
Live Action president Lila Rose urges Arizona authorities to enforce the state’s sex-selection ban: “Sex-selective abortion is a global search-and-destroy mission against little girls that is spreading at an alarming rate. While we wait for Congress to pass the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act to ban sex-selective abortion in the U.S., state authorities should vigorously enforce Arizona’s law. The clinics supporting sex-selective abortion should be investigated, prosecuted, defunded, and delicensed immediately.”
Undercover in Hawaii
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Undercover in North Carolina
Our undercover video found that two clinics in Phoenix broke the law by refusing to report statutory rape. Jackie Stollar and Lila Rose posed as 15-year-old girls, with Stollar telling the Planned Parenthood staffer at one clinic that her boyfriend was 27, and told the other clinic staffer that her boyfriend was “a lot older”. Both clinics failed to report the abuse.
Studies
Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl
Where Have All the Girl’s Gone? by Mara Hvistendahl
I Know It’s a Girl, I Need Your Help by Sunita Puri
More than 100 Million Girls are Missing by Amartya Sen study (original 1990 paper observing sex selection and missing girls)
Studies
PNAS Study: “Son-biased sex ratios in the 2000 United States Census,” Almond and Edlund, Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesA natural boy:girl birth ratio is 1.05:1. Among children of Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans, first children showed normal sex ratio, but the ratio increased to 1.17:1 for second children if the first child was a girl, and to 1.51:1 for third children if the first two children were girls. If there was a previous boy child, the sex ratios for subsequent births remained natural.
Columbia Study: “Are there missing girls in the United States? Evidence from birth data,” Abrevaya, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. We offer evidence of gender selection within the United States. Analysis of comprehensive birth data shows unusually high boy-birth percentages after 1980 among later children (most notably third and fourth children) born to Chinese and Asian Indian mothers. Based upon linked data from California, Asian Indian mothers are found to be significantly more likely to have a terminated pregnancy and to give birth to a boy when they have previously only given birth to girls. The observed boy-birth percentages are consistent with over 2,000 “missing” Chinese and Indian girls in the United States between 1991 and 2004.
University of California-Berkley Study
Dr. Puri is a resident at UCSF who has spent six years studying sex-selection abortion in the United States, with an emphasis on South Asian populations. In interviews with 65 South Asian women seeking sex selection services, she found that 40% of them had aborted prior female fetuses and 89% of them aborted the baby girls they were currently carrying.In a 2009 study, Dr. Puri compared the attitudes of primary care physicians and sex selection providers towards the practice, and found primary care physicians to be much less accepting. Replace “sex selection” with “abortion” or “birth control” in this abstract, and the results are very telling:Primary care physicians and SSTPs had distinctly different perceptions of the ethical concepts of autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence as applied to sex selection. Sex selection technology providers argued that sex selection was an expression of reproductive rights, was initiated and pursued by women, and was a sign of female empowerment that allowed couples to make well-informed family planning decisions, prevented unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and minimized the abuse of wives and/or neglect of children.In contrast, PCPs challenged the concept of “family balancing” and questioned whether women could truly express free choice under family and community pressure. In addition, PCPs voiced the concerns that sex selection technologies led to invasive medical interventions in the absence of therapeutic indications, contributed to gender stereotypes that could result in neglect of children of the lesser-desired sex, and were not a solution to domestic violence.
Polls
The Lozier Institute poll, May 2012: 77% of respondents said that they would support a law banning abortion in cases where “the fact that the developing baby is a girl is the sole reason for seeking an abortion.”
LifeCanada poll, October 2011: Conducted by Environomics Research, showed that 92% of Canadians thought that sex-selection abortion should be illegal in Canada.
Zogby poll, March 2006: Found that 86% of Americans believe that an abortion performed because of the sex of the developing child should be illegal.
