Abortion of Girls on the Rise in Communist China

By Liz Townsend

Xiao Wei and her family had a huge celebration when her son was born. The poor family in Anhui Province in east China has grand dreams for their son: expensive kindergarten, a good college, and a successful life. But these dreams could only come true after Xiao Wei lost her first two children (one was given away and one was aborted) because they were girls.

Xiao Wei's story, reported in the Irish Times, is a sad but common example of the realities of life under Communist China's brutal one-child policy. Under the policy, families must have only one child or face heavy fines and public condemnation.

Chinese parents rely on their male children to take care of them as they age. Their female children are expected to marry and become part of their husbands' families when they grow up. So if a woman can have only one child, she faces enormous pressure to make sure it is a boy.

"A woman without a son will be cursed by her mother-in-law and laughed at by the village," Xiao Wei told the Irish Times. Her second daughter was aborted after an ultrasound scan showed she was female, a practice that is routine in China.

Sex-selection abortions are officially illegal in China, but the New York Times found that the law is rarely enforced. In eastern Guangdong province, an ultrasound scan costs the equivalent of $4, and an abortion of "an unwanted female can be arranged the same day for the equivalent of $15 to $120," the Times reported.

Since the unborn baby needs to be larger before the sex can be determined, most of these abortions occur in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, according to the Times.

Even families that violate the one-child policy usually make sure that their second child is male. A study in a central Chinese province found that parents who already have one daughter and discover their second child is also a girl abort the baby 92 percent of the time, the New York Times reported.

Abortion is not the only way that girls are discarded. A Chinese study found that infanticide is a last resort for families too poor to buy an ultrasound scan or an abortion, the Irish Times reported. "Some parents consider female infanticide nothing more than a delayed abortion," study author Zhu Chuzhu told the Irish Times.

The one-child policy has led to a staggering disparity between births of boys and girls. Census data from 2000 found a national average of 117 boys born for every 100 girls - - an increase from 1990, when the ratio was 111 to 100. In parts of Guangdong province the ratio was even more lopsided: 144 boys were born to every 100 girls, or three boys for every two girls. The worldwide average is 106 to 100.

There are now about 70 million more males than females in China, and this shortage of women contributes to huge social problems. According to the Irish Times, women are increasingly kidnapped and sold as brides or into prostitution. "Men in the countryside pay handsomely for a wife - - even one abducted and married off against her will," the Irish Times reported.

Although government officials pay lip service to the problem, saying the gender imbalance will "damage social and economic stability," according to the Irish Times, their one-child policy remains in place.

Xiao Wei, like countless other women in China, seemed to accept that her duty to give birth to a boy was simply a reality of life in her country: "I miss my first daughter very much but this is the way it has to be."