Free Republic

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still needed for the family to make its living. Perhaps only sons may inherit land. Perhaps a daughter is deemed to join another family on marriage and you want someone...

Chen Rong has managed to save five little girls she's found. "Innocent children are being killed," she says, "because they are girls, not boys." Boys More Valued Historically, Chinese culture has valued male children over females, especially in rural areas, where peasants want boys to help in the fields. Today, as ultrasound machines have become readily available, China has seen an epidemic of sex-selection abortions — so many, that the ratio of males to females in parts of China has been thrown wildly out of kilter. For every 100 girls born here, there used to be about 105 boys. Now,...

<p>Couples are more likely to have a girl than a boy if either of the partners smoked heavily while they were trying to conceive, new research suggests.</p> <p>Some scientists consider the ratio of male to female births to be an indicator of a population's health, because male sperm and embryos are more fragile than their female counterparts.</p>