The Other Global War

Not a bad article by Nancy Gibbs in Time on the grassroots efforts to win hearts and minds in the abortion war. Crisis pregnancy centers now outnumber abortion clinics. The print issue tilts the bias left with a cover shot of tiny models of fetal development, and asks---are they playing fair?

I wonder if Time has ever done a cover story---Planned Parenthood, are they playing fair?

I seem to recall a story about Planned Parenthood covering up the abortion of a 14 year old girl who was impregnated by a 21 year old. The NY Times neglects to mention that the older man was the girl's soccer coach, and she was 13 at the time of the statutory rape. I guess Planned Parenthood and the NY Times think sex is always consensual. The case is still pending. Playing fair?

And oh, let's see, according to Planned Parenthood, Time's last big cover story, for which they received an award from the group, was "The Population Curse" during the Reagan administration. Sounds like a balanced title, hmm?

Of course, now much of the developed world is facing a population BUST, especially in Old Europe. But the developing world is facing a particular population bust, with started with the advent of legal abortions, and in particular, China's one child policy.

Girls are being aborted now all over the world at greater rates than boys.

Has Time magazine done a cover story on this?

Has the UN raised the alarm?

Here is a reference to the problem by Physicians for Life:

Renowned scholar Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt [American Enterprise Institute (AEI)] made a striking presentation at the UN 7Dec06 when he pointed out the global epidemic of sex selected abortions that is permanently skewing the demographic profile of the world. He warned delegates of the growing global gender imbalance due to prenatal sex selection and sex selected abortions. Calling the trend a “Global War Against Baby Girls”, Eberstadt delivered extensive statistics on the rise of “son preference” in every part of the world.
Refuting the assumptions that preference for baby boys is a localized cultural phenomenon or due solely to coercive population programs, Eberstadt’s research reveals that imbalance is due to several factors: an existing preference for sons, a decrease in overall fertility, and the exponential increase in the use of technology which facilitates sex selection in the prenatal stages. He also emphasized that a rise in education levels does not slow the problem and in some cases is associated with increases in aborting baby girls.
According to Eberstadt, natural birth rates are about 105 males for every 100 females born. Some regions of the world are experiencing upwards of 115 boys born for every 100 girls, some are as high at 150 boys born for every 100 girls. He warned delegates that this could just be the beginning and that the world is “moving to the realm of science fiction” as the ratio of baby boys to baby girls was already at levels “beyond nature.” Citing a recent study, Eberstadt said that even now there are 20 million “missing” baby girls in Asia alone, that sex-selected abortions have permanently skewed the demographic balance of China and are in the process of skewing the demographic balance of India. He also showed the way that the trend has crept into Eastern Europe and Latin America, and that almost every African state is showing signs of vulnerability to the phenomenon.

Full text here. And what are the other consequences of that imbalance? An increase in sex trafficking of girls, and yup, national security issues.

So some perspective here is wise. It's a healthy trend to have more crisis pregnancy centers in the US than abortion clinics. Because there's more than one kind of unintended consequence to consider. And the moral dimensions are greater than any of us might have expected over 30 years ago when Roe v. Wade was decided, when the feminists and their allies on the Supreme Court decided to play God.

I remember when my kids were little, I was so upset I put a bumper sticker on my car---SHE's a child, not a choice. I thought maybe I could get through with that message. Someone keyed it off at the Park District Parking lot. So after that I was kind of bitter and thought, why should I care so much if feminists are killing their own babies? Why indeed.


UPDATE: Related story on the dangers of the conventional wisdom powered through as policy by the elites, "Global-warming theory and the eugenics movement". John Linder, Washington Times, RCP:

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was one of the most vocal adherents. She established the first "birth control" clinic in 1916.
They believed that "the best" human beings were not having as many children as inferior ones -- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, Blacks, degenerates, the unfit and the "feeble minded." Sanger said "fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste." H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Roosevelt said, "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.

Related posts: Hot Talk and the Skeptics