by Jennifer Roback Morse
This article was first published at familyinamerica.org on January 10, 2012.
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
Mara Hvistendahl
Public Affairs, 2011; 314 pages, $26.99
This brave and timely book has many strengths and one glaring, but understandable, weakness. The strength of this book is the reporting. Mara Hvistendahl, a liberal, pro-choice feminist, painstakingly documents the catastrophic consequences of the worldwide “choice” for male babies: gender imbalance leading to prostitution, sex slavery, and male frustration and aggression. The weakness of this book is the political analysis. She doesn’t understand how deeply Roe v. Wade changed American political culture, particularly within the conservative movement broadly conceived. But both these strengths and weaknesses work together to yield an honest and courageous book that should be read by anyone who considers himself (or herself) well informed. Read more…
Categories: Babies, Children, Demography, gender, Jennifer Roback Morse, Newsletter articles, Population Tags: fertility, gender imbalance, gender selection, Jennifer Roback Morse, Population
by Shannon Roberts
Past Eugenics and sterilisation programs in the United States are coming back to bite them, with North Carolina currently the first State to address compensation for victims.
According to the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, at one time 31 states in the United States had government-run eugenics programs. In North Carolina alone, close to 8,000 men, women, and children, largely poor, black, disabled or uneducated, were forcibly sterilized from 1929 to 1974. The programs were aimed at creating a better society by eliminating those considered undesirable. Read more…
by Carolyn Moynihan
When prenatal diagnosis brings bad news about their child, parents deserve a real choice of paths. Happily, there is a beautiful option available.
In a Melbourne maternity hospital last month a very shocking event occurred. A healthy, 32-week-old, wanted, unborn child was killed by a lethal injection when the sonographer performing the procedure mistook the child for its unhealthy twin. When the mistake was realised, the mother had an emergency caesarean section and the sick child was also terminated, according to news reports. The whole tragic episode left the mother traumatised and everybody involved distraught. Read more…
So horrible.
by Peter Saunders
Children with special needs can be a great challenge to care for but a tragic story from Australia this week demonstrates that the search for the perfect child can have devastating consequences. Read more…
From NPR. Click to listen.
Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That’s because a baby’s cells linger in its mom’s body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It’s such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.
Found here.
by Steven Ertelt
After making headlines nationwide with curious comments in an interviewin which many observers say he indicated he believes human life begins at implantation, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has restated his pro-life views. Read more…
November 25th, 2011
Betsy
Disturbing on so many levels….
by Michael Cook
Euthanasia is OK, but circumcising male babies is a bridge too far.
There seems to be no end to the creative energy of the right-to-die movement in the Netherlands. The latest innovation is a proposal for a euthanasia flying squad. The lobby group Right To Die wants mobile vans to buzz around the streets so that patients can die at home, not in hospital. Read more…
November 17th, 2011
Betsy
by Sheila Liaugminas
Oh, the irony. We’re talking about a ‘personhood amendment.’
We’re at the point in Orwellian politics and culture at which states are taking legislative measures to define and protect basic truths. Ones we all knew until about the seventies. Read more…
November 17th, 2011
Betsy
By Cheryl Wetzstein
In the eyes of children, is it paramount that they were “planned” and “wanted”? Or does the family structure of their home matter more?
These are two of the many thought-provoking questions about donor-conceived children and “diverse” family forms in a report released Thursday from the Commission on Parenthood’s Future at the Institute of American Values (IAV). Read more…
by Joel Kotkin
The world’s population recently passed the 7 billion mark, and, of course, the news was greeted with hysteria and consternation in the media. “It’s not hard to be alarmed,” intoned National Geographic. “We should all be afraid, very afraid,” warned the Guardian. Read more…
by Charlie Butts
As Mississippi voters prepare to weigh in on a personhood amendment, one pastor argues that poverty is no excuse to abort an unborn child. Read more…
By David Picella
For couples that are experiencing infertility, the desire to have a child can be overwhelming. Every month that passes is another missed opportunity. Depression, grief, sadness, and despair eventually set in and at some point most couples become desperate enough to gamble with tens of thousands of dollars on expensive procedures like InVitro Fertilization (IVF) without fully understanding what they are getting themselves into. For the vast majority of couples who try IVF, false hopes turn false, and things that sound too good to be true prove to be so. Read more…
Tonight Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse will interview Katie Elrod. Elrod has been a humanities teacher and administrator in independent schools for over 15 years, and has taught in the Perspectives program at Boston College. She received her BA and MA in philosophy from Boston College, where she was a Lonergan Fellow. Read more…
by Christopher White
Last week in the Guandong province of China, a two-year-old girl wandered out into a busy street and was hit by a passing van. If the incident doesn’t sound tragic already, what followed can only be described as criminal. After the driver first realized he had run over the young girl, video footage shows him looking out his window, only to continue forward and running over her again with his back right wheel. The surveillance footage also shows that eighteen pedestrians or bicyclers passed by the child without stopping to help until a woman collecting street garbage came along to pick her up. The video ends with a devastated mother running out onto the street looking for her daughter. The likely cause of such neglect? The injured toddler was a girl. Read more…
by Michael Stokes Paulsen
The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence appears to protect a right to abortion even for reasons of sex selection. Yet this gruesome reality might provide an opening for a frontal assault on the premises of Roe v. Wade. Read more…
What a sad, crazy, messed up world.
By CHAYA BABU – Associated Press
MUMBAI, India (AP) — More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony Saturday that it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls. Read more…
FoxNews.com
Stacie Crimm made the ultimate sacrifice — and she got her dying wish. As doctors and nurses wearing protective gear looked on last month, the 41-year-old mom got to hold her newborn daughter. Read more…
by Carolyn Moynihan
There was a very moving piece in the New York Timeson Sunday, written by a mother whose 18-month-old son was born with Tay-Sachs disease and is not likely to see his third birthday. Read more…
WASHINGTON, September 1, 2011– R&B Pop Superstar Beyonce Knowles’ recently announced pregnancy has ignited lots of interest but also social debate about controversial issues like the high rate of out-of-wedlock births in urban cities. Read more…
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