My Research Paper

Sex Selection
Abstract
There are many methods to use when parents desire a child of a specific sex. I will briefly describe a few of the most common and effective methods. Next I will detail how the sex ratio at birth is calculated. Then I will describe what conditions must be in place for populations to widely choose sex selective methods. I will go on to detail what has happened in countries that have used sex selective methods commonly and have moved their sex ratios at birth out of the normal range. Then I will end with a discussion of what different governments are doing to try to bring their sex ratios at birth back to normal, and when they hope to see it happen.
Research Paper
There are many ways of insuring that a child born is the sex desired. The oldest and most barbaric way is through infanticide. In infanticide the child is carried to term and delivered. After birth the baby is killed, either through neglect, starvation, poisoning or other more violent means. Female infanticide is as old as some cultures. In Greece in 200 B.C. only one percent of families had two daughters. In India in the early 19th century there were some villages that had no baby girls at all. In the 1970’s came the prenatal ultrasound and amniocentesis tests. With these two tests the sex of a baby can be determined early in the pregnancy and if a child is of an unwanted sex, it can be aborted. A report by the International Planned Parenthood Federation says the vast majority of aborted fetuses are female, over 70%, up to 750,000 female fetuses were aborted in 1999 in China. According to UNICEF in Bombay in 1984 7,999 out of 8,000 aborted fetuses were females. A third, much more expensive, option is pre-implantation genetic screening. In this procedure eggs are extracted and fertilized outside of the mother. After 3 to 5 days a cell is extracted from each embryo and tested for genetic diseases and sex. Then only healthy embryos of the desired sex are implanted into the mother’s womb to continue growing. Pre-implantation genetic screening is a new technology. Its first human success was in 1989 with the baby being born in 1990. Because it is new and extremely invasive and labor intensive this method of sex selection is also very expensive, costing upwards of $12,000. There have been many international debates on the ethics of using pre-implantation genetic screening for the non-medical purpose of sex selection. Some argue is it better then the alternatives of infanticide and abortion so should be allowed. Others feel that any use of genetic screening will allow for prejudices of types of humans to become apparent and should be avoided at all costs. Pre-implantation genetic screening is not commonly used but may become so in the future as the technology becomes better and if the price lowers. Of course there are also many other things couples have tried to do to influence the conception of a certain sex. But none of them have proven to be consistently influential in the outcome.
The sex ratio at birth, SRB, is the comparison of male births to female births in a given area. This is computed as how many males born to every one hundred girls. A normal level is considered to be 103 to 107. Young boys have a higher mortality rate and the ratios are close to 100 by the time the population reaches maturity.


For a large portion of the population to choose sex-selection of their children there has to be three conditions in place. First sex-selection must be available, both the technology and the funds to pay for it must be within the parents reach. Second it has to be socially acceptable or within the parent morality to choose sex selection. And lastly there has to be some benefit to the parents to have one sex over the other.
In the late 1970’s amniocentesis and ultrasound technology became available. In the 80’s it became widespread and cheap so nearly every couple had at least one ultrasound during every pregnancy. In China this meant that couples could find out early in their pregnancies if they were carrying a boy or girl and choose to abort if the baby was not the prized sex.
“When a son is born,
Let him sleep on the bed,
Clothe him with fine clothes,
And give him jade to play.
When a daughter is born,
Let her sleep on the ground,
Wrap her in common wrappings,
And give broken tiles to play.”
(Baculinao, “China grapples with legacy of its missing girls”)

In many of the Asian cultures a son is prized above a daughter for several reasons. Sons carry on the family bloodline. Sons are also important in various ancestral rituals. Families without sons fear poverty and neglect. Sons represent continuity of lineage and protection in old age. Females cannot legally own property so a family farm or business is given to the government if there is no male heir when the father dies. There are no forms of social security and few have much savings. At marriage it is customary for the bride’s family to pay a dowry to the groom’s family. Because of this daughters are considered a substantial financial burden. When a son marries, his wife moves in with his family and the young couple serve and take care of the husband’s parents for the rest of their lives. Bearing a son is regarded as woman’s most important role in South Korea. There are reports of women crying tears of shame in maternity wards after giving birth to a girl. In 1980 China began enforcing its strict birth control limits allowing each couple to have only one child or face paying fines and increased education costs. Because of this limit a couple would only have one chance to have their son. Family size in China fell from 5.9 children per couple to 1.7 in just a couple of years. India also began to limit family size to two. In a society where female children were already regarded as less than their male counterparts, because of the family size limit, females were worth even less.

Lakshmi already had one daughter, so when she gave birth to a second girl, she killed her. For the three days of her second child’s short life, Lakshmi admits, she refused to nurse her. To silence the infant’s famished cries, the impoverished village woman squeezed the milky sap from an oleander shrub, mixed it with castor oil, and forced the poisonous potion down the newborn’s throat. The baby bled from the nose, then died soon afterward. Female neighbors buried her in a small hole near Lakshmi’s square thatched hut of sun baked mud. They sympathized with Lakshmi, and the same circumstances, some would probably have done what she did. For despite the risk of execution by hanging and about 16 months of a much-ballyhooed government scheme to assist families with daughters, in some hamlets of India, murdering girls is still sometimes believed to be a wiser course than raising them. “A daughter is always liabilities. How can I bring up a second?” Lakshmi, 28, answered firmly when asked by a visitor how she could have taken her own child’s life eight years ago. “Instead of her suffering the way I do, I thought it was better to get rid of her.” (Jones, “Case Study: Female Infanticide”)
Now the results of the sex imbalance is being felt as the children born in the 80’s have reached adulthood. There are estimates of 111 million extra men between the ages of 15 and 30 in China. The surplus of men means there is rough competition for a wife. The brunt of the problem will be laid on the poorer classes of men since it is the culture in Asian societies to “marry up”. So the lower classes will be left without women to marry. Another problem is the back order of single men. Men are running out of women their own age to marry so they marry younger women and leave the younger men even less women to marry.
Fewer girls also have the effect of lowering the birthrate. Some view this as a positive effect since that was one of the goals when putting the restrictions on family size in the first place. But having so drastically lowered the birthrate it is now unsustainable, meaning, there are more dying in China each day then are born. Accelerated aging will put more pressure on unsound social security systems. A low birth rate will also lead to a shrinking working age population.
Many thought the lack of women would raise the value of women but the opposite has turned out to be true. There have already begun to be higher rates in crimes committed against women. In India brides are being bought for very little money, and then she is made available to all of the men in the family. Women are being kidnapped from North Korea and forced into slave marriages or prostitution. China police freed more than 42,000 kidnapped or enslaved women and girls from 2001 to 2003. The age of girls having crimes committed against them is also lowering, so younger girls are becoming sexual targets. There are also worries of the large single male population becoming an army with nothing to lose. The Chinese government worries this army will try to overthrow them, while those outside of China worry the government will use this vast army to invade others. There have been two rebellions in disproportionately male areas in Manchu Dynasty, China. “Low-status young adult men with little chance of forming families of their own are much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior. The growing crime rate in China which is being linking to China’s massive transient population, some 80 million of which are low-status males, seems to add weight to the observation.” (Baculinao, China grapples with legacy of its missing girls)
South Korea recognized their SRB was a problem and banned doctors from revealing the sex of a fetus before its birth in 1987. That law proved difficult to enforce as ultrasounds are done in private doctors offices and the sex of a fetus can be related to the parents non-verbally if needed. South Korea launched a responsive program in 1995. They created billboards that stated “One well-raised daughter is worth ten sons!” What seemed to help South Korea the most was the shift in the economy that opened doors for women to join the workforce in greater numbers than ever before. Many new laws were put in place to help break the glass ceiling women were facing in the workplace. Attitudes of young women changed and they began to say they didn’t want to live like their mothers. A 2006 study done by the Korea institute for Health and Social Affairs surveyed 5,400 married women and only 10 percent said they felt they must produce a son. That’s down from 41 percent in 1991. South Korea was able to lower their SBR from 113 in 1997 to 108 in 2008. Now other Asian countries are looking to South Korea as a model as they work to lower their own SRBs.
In the year 2000 China launched a pilot program in Chaohu city an area with one of the highest ratios. The “Care for girls” campaign had multiple strategies aimed at lowering the birth ratios including: aiming to end pre-birth sex selection and female infanticide, assisting families that plan to give birth to girls, establishing specialized women’s organizations, punishing those found to be committing non-medical sex-selective abortions and infanticide, making new laws and regulations addressing gender equality in the workplace and in inheritance, enhancing the social-security system, and other activities. Within three years the SRBs in Chaohu decreased from over 125 to 114.
In 2003 China expanded its “Care for Girls” campaign to 24 more counties. The counties chosen were again chosen because they had the highest SRBs in the country. Under the program a couple who has two girls would receive a combined annual pension of about $150 for the rest of their lives. The project worked reducing the SRB from 133.8 to 119.6 by 2005. So in 2006 China has made the “Care for Girls” campaign a nationwide effort. China has also loosened the birth control policy they had in place. Now it’s one child in the cities, two in rural areas, three in ethnic regions and no limit in Tibet. They hope to lower the national SRB to normal levels within 15 years.
Indian Government intervention has been to push getting more education for girls. They hoped that women with more education would assert their own rights including the right to bear daughters. This seems to have had no change on the attitudes of women in this country, even highly educated women, will have as many as eight abortions to ensure they only give birth to a son. In the providence of Tamil Nadu the leaders will gives families of one or two daughters and no sons $160 per child for school. The girl will also get a small gold ring on her 20th birthday and a sum of $650 to help pay her dowry. India has made some changes to their laws, allowing daughters to inherit parent’s property. But the laws are inadequate and poorly implemented. Some say what is still needed in India is more equal inheritance laws, improved health facilities and education that highlight the importance of equal treatment of boys and girls in the family. There are no forecasts as to when India’s SRB might normalize. In conclusion, there are several methods of sex selection available worldwide. Those countries with strong male preference and limits on family size have over used sex selection methods and skewed their sex ratios at birth. The skewed ratios have had many negative effects on their societies. The governments have responded trying several different laws and social programs to change their sex ratio at birth. The most effective change happened in South Korea where an economic boom helped them lift the worth of women at the same time they were trying to stop the killing of female fetuses. The other governments are now trying to do some of the same cultural attitude changes but have a long struggle ahead of them.