Learning from India's abortion problem

As the 31st anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision arrives later this month, U.S. newspapers will run a few stories about America's quietly continuing abortion plague. But in India, where cars stop for sacred cows but abortion or infanticide of little girls is rampant, the problem is very visible on streets where young men without women prowl.

Skewed birth statistics tell the story. For example, look at the district-by-district birth figures for areas surrounding the ancient pilgrimage region of Madurai in south India. Usilampatti in December 2002 had 910 male births and only 690 female ones. Chellampatti had 848 male births and 623 female ones. And so it goes: Boy babies are desired, girl babies despised and, probably one out of four times, killed.

Most Indians desire male sons for both theological and economic reasons. Only sons can perform the funeral rites that purportedly help give souls safe passage to good rebirths. Only a son can snag a dowry from the family of a bride that must provide cash or cattle to have him take the daughter off its hands.

What one journalist (The Hindu, July 24, 2003) called "the fear of giving birth to female babies" now has technological teeth. Health officials say that many parents still obtain sex ID scans despite legal pressure on doctors not to provide such information. When one mark on the screen is missing, abortion beckons. Among those not so technologically adept, infanticide of just-born little women remains a threat. (Once the right to abortion is secured, why not view infanticide merely as a late abortion?)

All of this occurs despite the anti-abortion messages inscribed in Hinduism's sacred texts. For example, in the 10th volume of the ancient Rig Veda, the 162nd aphorism advocates the safety of pregnancy and strongly protests against abortion: "O! Pregnant women: Whichever monster approaches you with the evil intention to destroy your pregnancy/Whoever approaches your womb/Let fire destroy him ..."

The hymn continues, "O! Pregnant women: Whichever devil kills the pregnancy that lives in your womb/ Whichever monster kills the fetus that is taking human shape by three months/ Whoever intends to kill the baby that is evolved in 10 months/ I destroy him in the presence of this sacred fire. ... Whoever carries you to a dreamy state of a fool and tries to abort your pregnancy, tries to kill your baby/ I destroy him in the presence of this holy fire."

Today, though, abortionists are not destroyed. Indian feminists don't like sex-selective abortion, but they do like the availability of abortion generally, so most don't speak out both for fear of upsetting the applecart and out of general principle: If a woman has "the right to choose" and chooses to abort an unborn girl because she's not a boy, what's wrong with that?

It's obviously wrong for the individual child who is killed. Some writers equate the pro-life movement now with the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s or the Dalit ("untouchable") rights movement in India now, but the situation of unborn children in the United States or India now is even worse, since an unborn child has only subjective rights: If she's "wanted" by the mother, she is protected; but if "unwanted," she has no rights.

Abortion is also wrong for nations. European countries that provide equal-opportunity abortion -- boys and girls are killed in approximately the same numbers -- face a general birth dearth that is jeopardizing their governmental pension systems. India has millions of mateless young men who may provide eager cannon fodder for neo-fascist demagogues ready to rumble with Pakistan.

Solutions? Maybe bards can deal with the problem better than politicians have. The great 17th century Indian poet Tukaram wrote, "That man is true/ Who takes to his bosom the afflicted. ... The heart of such a man is filled abrim/ With pity, gentleness and love/ He takes the forsaken for his own."

Marvin Olasky writes daily commentary on Worldmagblog, a Townhall.com member group.

Missionaries report the same for China - female babies are aborted, sometimes right before birth, and young males roam the streets. Newspapers don't cover this of course, but it has gotten to the point where these males can't find a woman to date and marry and take to rape.

Will the nations learn before it is too late?

And lastly, I never heard the expression that young men are "fodder for war with" another country. Yikes. This sees everyone as expendable --a condition caused by taking life before birth with such a lackadaisical attitude.

I recall reading somewhere that when the proportion of young, unattached males in a population greatly exceeds that of females, war becomes much more likely. This is not only because males are more agressive than females, but because there are not enough available mates to go around. Thus the males are essentially fighting for more females. Quite a biological view, but one that does seem to have some logical foundation.

This is also true in cultures (such as Islam) where powerful men can take more than one wife. Since males and females occur at about the same percentage (normally, without abortion of females), this means that there are not enough women left over for the less powerful males, and that they will probably never be able to have a wife. This leads to considerable anger and violence in that society, and the anger is not expressed against the system that prevents them from having a wife, or against the powerful who have taken the available women, but against outsiders. Sound familiar?

And lastly, I never heard the expression that young men are "fodder for war with" another country.

According to Thomas Sowell, the custom in Ireland was for the son to remain single until the father died and he inherited land. The result was that men in their late twenties were unmarried and behaved like adolescents. Hence, "the fighting Irish."
The imbalance in the sexes in India and China suggests that women from other countries might attract Asian men . . .

The Indian situation is a pure interface of culture and technology -- the Chinese situation is an artifact of culture and the government's "one child" policy.

Although Chinese culture always valued sons, daughters were cherished as well, not thought of as a burden or a curse the way they were traditionally regarded in India. The ability of men of means in China to take a second wife (technically, a concubine, but one with whom a man's children would be deemed wholly legitimate) helped make daughters not quite the burden that they were in Hindu India, with a one wife limit and concubines' children being deemed illegitimate.

As India becomes wealthier, it will import ethnic Indians from Africa and South America (Guyana) and probably develop a willingness to import Nepalese and maybe even Burmese girls.

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