By Liz Townsend

Combining devastating firsthand accounts and frightening statistics, The Economist's March 6 issue focused on the "gendercide" occurring in many Asian countries. Girl babies are being "aborted, killed, neglected to death" where cultural traditions and state-enforced family limits lead to an overwhelming preference for boys, the newspaper reported.

The imbalance in the gender ratio has severe consequences in the region, which in some places reaches 130 boys for every 100 girls (the normal ratio is about 105 to 100). "China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men--'bare branches,' as they are known--as the entire population of young men in America," according to The Economist. "Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity."

The newspaper includes a tragic account by Chinese writer Xinran Xue of a birth she witnessed in rural China. After the woman gave birth to a daughter, the baby girl was discarded in a slops pail. Xinran loudly protested that it was murder, but she was told, "It's not a child. ... It's a girl baby, and we can't keep it. Around these parts, you can't get by without a son. Girl babies don't count."

Although The Economist makes clear that as a newspaper it supports abortion, its authors cannot deny the destruction that the culture of death is causing in these countries. They call for the societies to place a greater value on girls through education and public action, and include a specific demand that sounds remarkably like the pleas pro-lifers have been making for years: "Most obviously China should scrap the one-child policy. ... President Hu Jintao says that creating 'a harmonious society' is his guiding principle; it cannot be achieved while a policy so profoundly perverts family life."

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Part Three
Part One