Re “The Evil of sex selection.” We’ve deliberated over this issue for quite some time as we are releasing a book that deals with just this issue as it is presented in China.

I am trying to make this post as non-commercial as possible while toting the courage of our author, Talia Carner, to take this skeleton of social closet and dance with it in the open with her new novel, China Doll. She faces infanticide head on, with no reticent or restraint that seems to characterize our government these days–and more so the mammoth corporations trying to set foot in the vast new promising market. Carner’s novel is an explosive story whose underline premise is that if the pop singer on a concert tour in China doesn’t save the baby thrust into her arms, the infant will surely find her death in the dumping ground of a Chinese orphanage.

I would like to invite your readers to study more about GENDERCIDE in China (where baby girls are singled out for death) by delving into the background articles on the author’s website. Some articles show gruesome photographs, but they tell the story of indifference to human life. Some of these articles have long disappeared from the internet–except on her website.

I hesitate to give further details and be accused of trying to sell you the book, (which, truthfully, I think is great), so for those of you really interested, just Google on and you’ll discover a world of not just “designer” babies, but of the cry of the million missing girls in China each year.

The “Banglapedia” (a wonderful site!) entry on dowry is here. It notes that B-desh passed the Dowry Prohibition Act in 1980, but is pessimistic on such laws actually having any effect on the social fabric of B-desh.

Combined with the high rise in population, very low GDP growth, and poor social security services, these factors reduce the possibility of dowry being eliminated from the [Bangladeshi] society in the near or even the distant future

And here an article by the Asian Legal Resource Centre on the problem of dowry-murder in B-desh). B-desh acid attacks (sometimes dowry related) and other violence against women sometimes makies the western press as well.

Anecdotally, my family member who married (pre-1971) to bangla-speakers had dowry. Dowry is the norm among UP and Bihari Muslims (technicaly, ‘jehez’ — a woman’s property when entering marriage.).

no. i’m not pro-life, but i’ve seen pro-life literature,they don’t believe this at all. the big issue with most american “pro-life” people in that they often correlate with belligerant pro-war pro-death penalty types. but, the roman catholic church and the hard core of right to life which began right after roe vs. wade is not like this, they are ‘seamless garment’ types in general (evangelical protestants took a few years to join the pro-life movement, and in fact, you can find stuff in christianity today cautiously supporting abortion rights from the late 1960s. remember, ronald reagan signed and abortion decriminalization bill in california as gov. in the 1960s).

if we were able to tell “prior to birth that a baby is going to be gay…the gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you’ve ever seen

And Conservatives would do the fastest 180 and become pro-choice!

It’s funny what people will do to control other’s lives.

M. Nam

i think here you have a case of necessary & sufficient conditions interlocking.

i’ve never heard of this. documentation? (my understanding from my parents is that some couples do brideprice, but most do nothing) i suppose you can ‘explain’ north indian muslims as elite emulation.

It’s so easy to see when others are imposing their morality on us, so hard to see whem we are imposing our morality on them.

it is the “wealthy” states like punjab and gujarat where sex selection is the biggest problem. higher SES tends to correlate with son preference in india.

This is true, in part. But it doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that Socio Economic Status correlates with female infanticide. The division as you point out is a north/south division. So it’s not just the wealthy states of Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana which compose North India, but also poor ones like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which also have quite low female child ratios. On the other side of the divide, states in the east and south of India tend to have male-female child ratios comparable to advanced industrial nations! For more information, check out “Missing Females”, Population and Development Review.

My point being that the fault line is clearly regional with northern and western states showing clear signs of natal inequality where as southern and eastern states seem quite progressive in this regard. Given that states in the north-western and south-eastern regions can be wealthy, poor, fast growing or slow growing, I don’t think there’s an immediate economic connection with regard to female infanticide.

I would put more emphasis on broader cultural and social patterns, without exactly dismissing the economic side.

As a right-wing mag, I would guess the purpose of the article was to show the awfulness of abortion by linking it to patriarchal and misogynistic practices of non-white immigrants, thereby scaring white liberals. (Better, I think, to focus on misogyny itself)

Razib — why is there dowry among north indian muslims then? And Bangladeshis too, I think.