Finding St Anthony Among the Lost Items

The problem of sex-selective abortion is not limited to China and India, but is increasing in communities within Western countries, a new report by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute says. “I think for a long time we’ve been denying that sex-selective abortion happens in the United States,” said Anna Higgins, J.D., associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute. However, she told CNA, “it does happen here.” Countries like China, with its miserable human rights record, are notorious for sex-selective abortions because of the country’s long-time forced one-child family policy, now a two-child policy. Human rights activists have termed the situation “gendercide” because so many families choose only to have a boy to carry on the family name. The practice has led to demographic disaster, with 33 million more men than women in the country, according to human rights activists. Yet sex-selective abortion happens not just in China and India, but within Western countries as well, Higgins argues. In certain immigrant communities in the U.S. – including some Indian-American, Korean-American, and Chinese-American communities – the ratio of baby boys to baby girls can actually be much higher than China’s. “Although not every country prohibits sex-selective abortion specifically, there is obviously a global awareness that prenatal sex-selection is unethical based on the sheer number of countries that prohibit preimplantation sex-selection techniques,” Higgins said of the numbers. “The United States is, in fact, lagging behind the rest of the world on this front.” Higgins, along with the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, is pushing for the House to pass the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act which would prohibit sex-selective abortions, along with the solicitation of funds for these abortions or any “coercion” of woman to obtain an abortion on basis of sex, which happens in some communities, Higgins said.