Unnatural Selection Chapter 4: The Doctor

Regular ol' folks view doctors as...special. Powerful, even. We trust our doctors, and they know that we do. There have been plenty of times where I've gone to the doc's for this or that and am completely relieved by their instant identification of my symptoms and the quick and confident assurance that this is gonna be just fine. Doctors are smart.  I believe that every young doctor enters the field to save lives, care for the sick and make a real difference in the world. The medical industry is well, an industry. Not just in the US, by around the world where medicine  is becoming increasingly available in developing countries. This is a GOOD thing. The problem with the medical industry being an industry is that many doctors face pressures to offer the latest technologies, medications, treatments, etc. What happens if that technology isn't being used in the way it was intended? What is the latest technology is not being used to heal, but harm?

In the fourth chapter of Unnatural Selection, I met two doctors, one who represented that lonely fish swimming against the school and the other, representing all those who feel powerless to "just keep swimming" along. One doctor, Puneet Bedi of Dehli, India, a Harvard education gynecologist, makes no bones about voicing his opinion on gender selection. "Everybody who does it knows it unethical. It's mass medical crime." 

Bedi refuses to scan for sex or abort female babies. He just won't do it.  So the wealthy families of that part of India come to him to deliver their sons. Around 70% of all Bedi's deliveries are of male children.  That's a lot of blue.

Bedi's outspoken displeasure with gender selection practices in OB/GYN is juxtaposed by another gynecologist from South Korea, Cho Young-Youl who performs ultrasounds and abortions for the purpose of gender selection. What a monster, right? Actually, this guy is seriously intimidated by the demand for such services, and even tells Hvistendahl that he "considers himself powerless. He worries about the effects of late term abortion on his clients and dislikes the gender discrimination that is clearly happening right in front of his eyes. But yet he continues his practice, even despite concerns for the health of his patience. Powerlessness is a very powerful thing.

This "powerlessness" seems to be the norm among most doctors who are performing ultrasounds and subsequent abortions as part of gender selection practices in these countries and others. When the "system" seems so much bigger than you, it's easy to feel like there is nothing you can do to change it.  Another interesting point that makes change difficult in situations like this was brought up by our doctor from Dehli, Bedi. He points to a lack of accountability and responsibility as part of the reason the problem has spun so wildly out of control." Parents tell themselves doctor knows best, while doctors point to the overwhelming patient demand for the procedure." This creates a really interesting dynamic where NONE of the parties involved are taking responsibility for what they are working together on. I am less likely to act of its someone else's "fault." Its much easier to turn a blind eye this way.

So now we're in a pickle. A major one. It seems like all the players in this story are uncomfortable with it, but the culture at large seems to demand it, no one wants to own it and it will soon have a MAJOR GLOBAL impact like we've never seen. 

How can we turn these murky waters clear again? Maybe you're thinking, ' I'm just as powerless, what can I do from my computer desk? Let's start with education. Let's start with awareness. Think about it. When things are brought into the light, they are clearly seen and able to be repaired. Shine a light on the gender selection crisis: share this website with a friend, check out our LEARN SOMETHING page and talk about it. There is power in each and every voice and education and awareness is the first step in changing the mind and hearts of people and eliminating that feeling of powerlessness.

Unnatural Selection: Chapter 3- The Economist

Ermergerd.

I just had my mind blown. The complexity and paradox of this entire situation was just illuminated ever so slightly for me as I read chapter three. It was like shining a flashlight into the vast darkness: you finally can see a little bit, but you also realize how much remains to be seen. There's a lot going on here; "complex" doesn't scratch the surface. So far, I've seen the problem as something far away, that me and my culture have nothing to do with. Pffft. Wrong.

The more I learn about life, the more I learn how interconnected things really are. The more I learn about this part of life in particular, the more I realize that the same holds true, unfortunately, even for the darker parts of the human story.

Gender selection didn't just crop up randomly in countries that began developing.  The crisis we know today was put in motion years ago and was influenced by choices made with heavy influence from Western ideas. Here's what happened:

Hvistendahl mentions that "sex selection is a byproduct  of a sudden drop in fertility. And for at least the last sixty years, sudden drops in fertility have been inextricably tied up with development." So what does this mean? Essentially it means that when a country begins to grow economically people begin to have fewer children, when people have fewer children they have more money to spend and the economy continues to grow. It's cyclical, really.

There's something else at play here, as well. It isn't just that women in these countries who are enjoying life in the middle class have decided to strive for only male children...oh no, there's much more to this story.

In the early 1950s the UN Population Division released projections for population growth over the next several decades. Their predictions of an ever climbing global population sent  many Westerners into a tailspin, totally freaked out that all these extra people (caused by longer lifespans of the older folks) would surely send developing countries into deep poverty. It wasn't the poverty part that was bothersome, it was the concern that these poor countries would go "Red," you know, become communist. This fear of looming communist take-overs, in combination with the fact that the West was "losing their grip" over regions like Latin America, Africa and Asia were the catalysts for a ripple effect that ultimately resulted in the institution of such whoppers like China's one-child policy. YIKES.

In order to help stave off the potential population crisis, groups like the Population Council (thank you, Rockefeller) and the Population Crisis Committee, founded by Hugh Moore, (the Dixie Cup guy) developed. These groups in conjunction with the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Population Fund and others, took it upon themselves to convince most of Asia that fewer children lead to richer countries. The road to wealth was population control, more specifically birth control.

( I have to say that as I was reading this chapter I felt as if I was uncovering some huge, awful conspiracy. I was, all at once, totally compelled by the story, appalled by what felt like trickery on the parts of Rockefeller and the like, and guilt-striken to learn what a HUGE role the US played in creating such problem.

The thing that bothers me the most is that all of the action taken by these groups was based on a projection, a fancy guess. That's an awful lot of trouble to go through to save the world  from  a potential Communist take over that may or may not happened based on numbers that were, at the time, simply theoretical, and subject to change depending on whether or not there were factors in the projection that, perhaps had not been accounted for, but....hey better safe than sorry?

Ok, ok. So I'm a little heavy on the sarcasm today, I'm just taking this pretty hard I guess. Anyway...)

These groups eventually got Asian nations on board with birth control and it was  around that time in the late 60s  that more over-population propaganda came in the form of a book called The Population Bomb ( nutshell: too many people means the end of the world as we know it....RUUUUN).  Now it was getting coo-coo. Countries like Korea and China began writing "family planning" policies into their economic plans, and India was subjected to "draconian experiments directed at getting couples to stick to two children."  Oh, by the way, almost all of these projects were funded with Western money. What's more, China's one-child policy was directly (although unintentionally) influenced by a Westerner named Geert Jan Oslder, whose banter about a paper he wrote on Population Planning over a few beers with China's Song Jian became the very work the One-child policy was  later born out of.

All of these actions set Asia up for trouble, and with the heavy cultural preference for boys in this region of the world, it's easy to see how the balance became shifted so heavily. I doubt that the folks involved in getting the Population Control Machine rolling had any idea of what kind of Pandora's Box they were opening, and perhaps they truly believed that they were protecting the world from the evils of communism. But I am really bothered by the whole thing. It wasn't the abject poverty of millions that was the catalyst for such a drastic and enormous plan to start limiting the number of children people in other countries were having, it was to protect the assets and interests of those countries already experiencing wealth and power. Blarf. I'm a little bit heartbroken. Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20, and of course from my perspective the whole thing seems unreal, that a few powerful men and a few powerful companies could literally change policies of other governments really just through propaganda. Is fear-mongering too strong a word to use? Maybe I'm over-reacting, but if the West played such a pivotal role in the introduction of population control in countries that are knee deep in serious gender imbalances, then it only seems fair that the West be heavily involved in fixing the crisis they helped create. Just sayin'.

Unnatural Selection: Chapter 2- The Parent

The chapter opens with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "money often costs too much." I remember reading that  as I began the chapter and thinking...not seeing the connection here.


Well, I see it now.

As  I journeyed through  Hvistendahl's experience following two Chinese families as they navigated the "boys are better" culture of their respective communities, it became abundantly clear why the quote was chosen: the problem of gender selection appears when the economy of an impoverished  community improves, and approaches middle class. Mo money, mo problems...the problem being, fewer girls. Isn't that strange? In my ignorance, I had assumed that gender selection was a third world problem ( I'm almost ashamed to admit this, as it reveals me to be rather naive and culturally sheltered...yikes).

Either way this is the reality: Economy goes up, number of girls goes down. And here's another bomb that Hvistendahl drops on the reader. It's not the men in the family who are choosing to abort their daughters...it's the mothers and the mother-in-laws.

THAT. FLOORED. ME.

The first born child, if she is a girl, is usually spared, leaving the sex ratio pretty well balanced, but after that it is very typical to have 3, 5, 7 or more years between the first born daughter and the second born son. What does this mean? It means that there were likely a few pregnancies that ended after an ultrasound revealed the sex, until finally...the son arrives. And it's mom behind the wheel.

Of all the factors Hvistendahl mentioned in this chapter, the point she made about moms being the ones deciding to go through with multiple abortions really struct a chord with me. I read and reread that section of the text. See, I've got a few years of experience working with clients who've had abortion and have spent a good deal of time researching the psychology behind the choice to abort in America. To say it's complex is an understatement.

Hvistendahl points to two major reasons why women choose to abort their daughters:

" 'For women attempting to have a son and experiencing pressure to fulfill their 'womanly duty' by having a male child, sex-selective abortion can be extremely empowering..." she continues, " women know best how difficult is it to be a woman."  She goes on to note that women have become their own worst enemy.

...Their own worst enemy? Being a woman in a country like China means less opportunity even in a budding economy. Beyond that it's just "better to have boys" according to this paradigm. "If you don't have boys, you lose face" says,  Liao Li, one of the women Hvistendahl interviews in chapter two. I can only imagine what I would feel like as a woman living in that type of culture. There is a not so subtle, barely subliminal message that women are just not...worth it. And so, many women chose to abort their daughters for these reasons and others, knowing that they must have a boy for the sake of the families reputation in the community.

WOW.  

I have to say this... just throwing this out there as candidly as I can. What I read (and what I just quoted for you) shocked me, however it is MEGA important for us as folks coming from a totally different culture with a different paradigm to be sure that we don't allow ourselves to judge, to become angry, to vilify these women.

The problem of gender selection is not just the problem of individual women who would rather have sons. It is an ideology that entire cultures are literally swimming in. It's pervasive. And life as a woman is most certainly NOT the same in America as it is in other parts of the world.

The most interesting thing I've learned so far is the smallness of my own perspective. I never realized how little I knew or understood about other cultures and their problems. I have lived my whole life in America and ventured only briefly to Canada as a young 20- something to attend a youth rally... and that was almost a decade ago...eek.

My point here is that things are not always what they seem, as black and white as we'd like them to be or as easy to resolve as we'd hoped they would be. It's a little bit of a "chicken or the egg" question. What should change first? The mind of one women or the climate of a culture that rejects the value and worth of the girls they will never know? Grassroots or Global? Start big or at home? I'm going to start small, with me, my family, people that I know who've never even heard of gender selection until it becomes big, even global. I'm putting down any judgement and gearing up to learn about real people.

I've said this before, but it bares repeating: we are all in this together and this WILL BE our childrens' crisis. I think that we are all much more influenced by the culture we grew up in than we'd like to admit. Everyone wants to be a free thinker, right? My eyes were opened as I read this chapter and took a glimpse into a world that I have never known before. These issues are deep seeded and complex, but not at all hopeless.

Unnatural Selection: Chapter 1- The Demographer

I don't think about demographics, like...ever. I've used the word when referring to  hipster type groups of people while discussing my husband's music, "Oh, hun, yea that's totally your demographic," but that's the extent of my commitment to understanding the word or the actual scientific field that bares its name.

Here's the thing: apparently, demographics are important. Demographics tell the story of mankind. Where we've been and where we're going. Red flags are raised when demographers follow trends and don't love the road they go down. This was certainly the case for Christophe Guilmoto, the French demographer who is our protagonist in Hvistendahl's first chapter of  Unnatural Selection.

Here's the gist of what Guilmoto has been working on over the past several years:

For some reason, he noticed that there were way more boys than girls being born, so he started to focus on counting those boys. They aren't EXTRA boys, it turns out, really there are just WAY fewer girls being born. A nice healthy sex ratio is about 105 boys for ever 100 girls. What Guilmoto was finding was that the number of boys was much higher than number of girls, dramatically higher. Like, change the balance of the planet high. In India, at the time the book was written, there were 111 boys for every 100 girls, in South Korea it was 109 for every 100, in China a whopping 120 for ever 100...

So what? Right? A couple extra boys here and there can't be that big of a deal. Wrong. Hvistendahl calls this birth ratio imbalance "unrivaled in human history." Unrivaled. That means that NEVER BEFORE IN RECORDED HISTORY has the world seen such an intense imbalance in nature's male/female ratio for mankind.

Why does it matter? It matters because, well, the human race needs women to carry on. Less obvious are such concerns like increased human trafficking, kidnapping and an increase in violence among male dominated cultures. It matters because there is a growing paradigm that girls are far less valuable then boys. As countries begin to develop, the value and worth of baby girls deteriorates.

When I was in undergraduate school I spent A LOT of time writing on the subject of the dignity of women. I actually wrote my undergrad thesis on the subject. There is something magical about being a woman. The mind blowing power to give life, to nourish and heal with our bodies, the incredible sensitivity and intuition that women have, all these things and so much more not only improve the lives of the people we encounter, they provide an irreplaceable component of the human experience.

Maybe that is why I am so passionate about this crisis. It is utterly heart-wrenching to me. If we don't turn things around, and fast, the whole world...all of us...will be in big trouble. 200 million lost...sounds like endangered species status to me. By the time this crisis reaches it peak, when today's little children are tomorrow's adults, you and I will be very old, only able to watch and recollect the time when the solution was our responsibility. I don't want our children to scramble for a solution. I don't want our children to have no choice but to wander into uncharted territory, uncertain of how to solve a global population problem. I don't want our children to experience unrivaled imbalances in the sex ratio and all the unforeseeable problems that come with it. 

I don't mean to be a "Debbie Downer," and really I've noticed that I tend to learn about something, get sad, mope around a bit and then get motivated to act. I past the mope and on to motivated. Although in someways, the problem of gender selection still seems like someone else's far away problem, I know it's mine too. The more I learn and read the more real it becomes and the more I realize that today's action can solve tomorrow's problems.

Small Changes Change the World...

If you have children than you know just how small the universe really is. Small enough to fit in a onsie...
Even now as I write this she is squealing away, investigated the lid of my water bottle and squalking with excitement in the midst of her discovery. My whole  universe in a onsie.

After having a daughter it's hard to imagine life without her...or even just life BEFORE her. Having a child has transformed my desire to leave the world better than I found it into a passion, a MISSION. It's not just about leaving a legacy, its about leaving her with something MORE.

Enter Unnatural Selection, a text by Mara Hvistendahl. It will blow your mind. I'm reading it now, one chapter at a time because that's all I can do.

One chapter....whew, ok take a break.

The old adage  is true, knowledge really is power. The sad truth about gender selection and its GLOBAL effects is that we can't just leave it to the next generation, we can't just let them deal with the problem later because the next generation will be largely unavailable, millions missing. By the time my daughter is my age the world will look dramatically different, significantly fewer females will change the face of the planet. Not just the looks of things either, fewer females mean all kinds of issues that we've never faced as a PLANET before.

My plan is simple: learn something , then do something.

I'd like to invite you to join me...a sort of virtual book club, each week I will read one chapter and share my thoughts here, we can move through the book together.  We will learn together.  Then hare this blog with friends, start conversations, bring it to peoples' attention... do something. Small changes  can change the world...and maybe even the universe ;)

See you next week...

"She Did It on the First Try..."

The whole world has been clambering to get a glimpse at Kate and Williams baby. Every magazine, newspaper and blog has at least had some mention of the Royal Birth. I try to keep up with the news, and although this 'news' required very little "keeping up with," I was  totally dumbfounded by a report I saw on, yes, that's right, the Jon Stewart Show. It was a hilarious montage of brief clips of different news agencies and how they had been falling all over themselves to be the first to air the news of the Royal Delivery ( not sure why I'm using caps here...guess it's the whole "Royal" thing...gah, I did it again!). The bit was funny...laugh out loud funny. Until one line from a British reporter stopped me DEAD in my tracks and all I could do was stare at the screen. It was something to the effect of:

" So many of the royal ladies have tried and tried, but here Kate is, she did it on the first try with a BOY!"

I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, that "oh my God, she didn't just say that" kind of feeling, that feeling you get right before you know you are about get really bad news. It was like that.  As the jovial anchor lady giggled with glee, my mind reeled with all of the questions that came to me almost instantly.

"Tell me again why boys are better?"
"Kate's a girl, we all seem to appreciate her...right?"
"They have a queen now, things seem to be working out ok"

Quips and silliness aside, I was initially shocked to hear the reporter, then almost immediately sort of like, well DUH, they wanted a boy, then shocked again by my reaction to my initial reaction.

There is a pervasive sense that boys are better, more valuable, and inherently more desirable than girls. And apparently, it's everywhere. As I read through Unnatural Selection  by Mara Hvistendahl, I'm learning that the phenomenon of gender selection practices is NOT found in poor, third world nations, but rather, crops up in developing countries on their way to economic prosperity. Weird. Not that it makes more sense for ANY particular economic demographic to be more inclined to these practices, but it seems particularly strange that as countries approach industrialization ( which typically comes with a supposed equality for women, etc) they  are spiraling into a world where girls are exponentially losing their "value."

That reporter's comment was loaded...LOADED. And I bet it went over the heads of most viewers. Maybe because people are unaware that such a strange practice exists and is taking hold in many countries, maybe because it's a pervasive ideology that folks don't spend much time pondering, maybe because everyone had Royal Baby fever. I don't know. What I do know is that it wigged me out something fierce. A woman talking about another woman, explaining--to the world-- how lucky she was that her offspring wasn't well..a  woman..albeit a little one.

Let's shift the paradigm, here. How can we help the world remember the worth and beauty of women and girls? How can we resurrect the awe and respect for the power of the feminine mystique? What will it take for the world to look at women and girls with honor and dignity? Forgive me while I climb down off my soapbox, but these are questions I need answered.

Eyes Wide Open

Some time ago I came across GIVE HER LIFE, and organization on a mission to educate the world about the  gender selections practices  going on throughout the world. I was excited to help, excited to be a part of something big, to change the world, to leave my mark. I was invited to do research, to share what I'd learned through the gift of gab in the form of a blog...

Well, it's been a while. Hasn't it? Life gets you busy, and with having a new daughter of my own, it's busy and full of constant little adjustments...she changes and grows everyday.

But if I'm honest with myself, I'd have to say it's more than that. It's more than everyday life getting in the way of what I thought would be my grand entrance into the cause to irradiate gender selection practices on a global scale. How heroic of me, right? Not exactly.

Here's what's actually going on: I'm overwhelmed. I. Am. Overwhelmed. By the problem. By the HUGE-ness of it, by the heartbreaking reality of it, by the future that lay ahead for this generation of children. And now, most difficult of all, as a mom, when I gaze into the absolute perfection I find in my daughter's eyes I am spellbound, and then I think 200 million smiles, 200 millions little hearts full of love...missing.

And then I stop.

I stop reading. I stop writing. I stop researching. Because it's hard. I don't want to believe it. I want to shut my eyes, but I can't.

I think whenever we are faced with a problem so big, or a tragedy so intense that we become overwhelmed, it's important for us to remember that "Rome wasn't built in a day." Cliche, yes. But I'm gonna run with it.

I will keep reading. I will keep writing. I will keep researching. I will take breaks to cry, to collect myself, and refuel.I'll take baby step. Small changes can add up to a world of difference. If I write about what I read, then you read what I write, then we both DO something, even something small, maybe our children and our children's children will look back as adults and say, "Remember when the world was a scary place? No...no, I don't remember."

I'm in it to win it, folks. I don't know where this will lead, but I'm going down the rabbit hole. It will be hard, but it will be worth it. Won't you join me?