Sex Selection Reinforces Oppression Of Women

In the mid-1980's, according to Chinese government statistics, birth control surgeries such as abortions, sterilizations, and IUD insertions, were running at a rate of 30 million a year. (Mosher 50) Numbers for more recent years are unavailable; the Chinese government, embarrassed by reports of coercion and female infanticide, has refused to release them. Many, if not most, of these operations are performed on women whose "consent" has been wrung out of them by threats and punishments. (Mosher 50) When questions are asked of the whereabouts of the 1.7 million female babies that fail to show up in birth statistics each year, there are disturbing explanations. (Richards 6)

Most females are not respected and are heavily pressured by their parents. Many Chinese women are expected to be in arranged marriages and are not respected in their family or the work-place. Woman that aren’t even born yet suffer from infanticide. If the parents came to find that they were having a girl from ultrasound- they would abort that child and try for a boy causing pre-birth ultrasounds to be banned. “Negative social consequences, particularly sex discrimination. With boys being viewed as culturally preferable, the practice of female infanticide was resumed in some areas shortly after the one-child policy took effect.” (Document E) “I hate to say it but the one-child policy should party be blamed for some social issues in youth today.” “She wished she has a brother or sister to share all the attention.” (Document F) This evidence supports the claim that the one-child policy was a bad policy because women have always been culturally no preferable, causing unborn females to be aborted.

Internationally, issues revolving around the female body and reproduction are extremely controversial. For a woman, her body is a very private matter. At the same time, however, a woman's body and her reproduction rights are the center of attention in many public debates. Several questions regarding women's reproductive rights remain unanswered. How much control do women have over their bodies? What kind of rules can be morally imposed upon women? And who controls the bodies of women? Although the public continues to debate these topics, certain conclusions can been made concerning women and their reproductive rights. An undeniable fact is that government has a large degree of control over female

As Mingliang states, “the Chinese preference for at least one son is well documented” (3). Having two sons in a family is very unusual in China. Due to the preferences of having sons, the abortion rates have increased. Abortion is well known in China, as is the “missing girls” phenomenon. Shaou, Dodge, and Suter argue that, “of the seven million abortions annually in China, the International Planned Parenthood Federation indicates that more than 70 percent are female unborn children”(4). This is a big percentage, and the number of girls in this country is decreasing every year. People are using different ways to limit the number of girls. Moreover, if a woman does not want to abort, she is forced to do so. Bluett argues that, “abortions are performed throughout the entire nine-month period, even up to the point of childbirth” (3), simply saying the increase in sex ration is caused mainly by son preference, which is as a tradition in China. It is significant to mention that because of the gender imbalance, younger generations are facing other problems. According to Bluett, “many males are left without a wife, which leads to an increase in human trafficking” (5). The one child policy is causing a lot of troubles and China has to make sure to reduce the negative effects of this policy.

In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the

China’s one-child policy made it illegal for most Chinese couples to have more than one child. It was the culmination of the government’s long struggle to control population growth. The policy was enforced mainly through financial incentives and punishments, but in rural areas brutal enforcement techniques like non-consensual sterilization and abortion were sometimes used. While the policy did reduce the population, it also caused problems such as an unbalanced male-female sex ratio and “4:2:1 families.” The one-child policy shows that women in Communist China remained in a position of social and political inferiority.

Approximately a hundred years later, in the 1960s, women started recognizing how the state was controlling their bodies by either forcing them to stay pregnant or face unsafe methods in order to remove the embryo. As a result, several women’s

This policy does not only limit the number of children a family can bear; it has also caused gender imbalance. In addition, it places pressure on women as families believe in passing down their family name down generations. They were also subjected to forced abortion if it appears to be a baby girl, and are blamed if they were to give birth to a baby girl. This difference in treatment took a turn for the worst after 1986, when ultrasound tests and abortion became easier to come by. Not only has the policy stole the freedom of women’s rights to make decisions, it had also led to the increase of female infanticide

Dena Davis in the 5th chapter of “Genetic Dilemmas: Reproductive Technology, Parental Choices, and Children’s Futures” explores the global attitudes, policies, and morality towards determination of sex. She begins with presenting empirical evidence of some preferences held in countries such as India or China where there is a clear desire for male children. This inclination is so deeply held that mothers can be socially and physically harmed when, by pure biological chance, they fail to produce a male child. Davis and others allow sex selection in these cases, purely in the interest of harm reduction of mothers and their daughters born into such a situation.

Women’s reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms pertaining to reproduction and reproductive health. One can expect reproductive rights to include the following topics: the right to birth control, the right to legal abortion, the right to education and access so that properly informed choices can be made and the right to access good-quality reproductive healthcare. The women’s reproductive rights and freedoms movement move far beyond the topic of the abortion movement alone, there are also debates that include forced sterilization abuse and population control when looking at the subject of reproductive rights. Throughout history, women have had their right to abortion taken away and have even been sterilized without their permission because they were mentally handicapped or just because they were not the “dominant” race because eugenicists wanted greater procreation by the middle-class women of European descent. Women have had to endure an abundant amount of abuse to their reproductive rights and freedoms, from having their right to abortion taken away to being wrongfully sterilized; women have had to fight for their rights that should have never been abused in the first place. This term paper will outline the history of the reproductive rights movement, the abortion movement, as well as discuss how women have been wrongfully forced into sterilization.

The WHO states that there are three core motivations for engaging in sex determination and sex selection which include “medical reasons such as preventing the birth of children affected or at risk of X-linked disorders; family balancing reasons where couples choose to have a child of one sex because they already have one or more children of the other sex; and gender preference reason often in favor of male offspring stemming from cultural, social, and economic bias in favor of male children and as a result of policies requiring couples to limit reproduction to one child, as in China.” In countries such as India and China, it is apparent that women can be harmed by sex selection

It is not coincidental to discover the elimination of femininity in its various methods in a social institution that implements oppression and dehumanization on human instinct for the sake of controlling civilians. After the Chinese communist government was established in early 1950s, the Chairman of that time, Mao Zedong, encouraged Chinese women to leave their traditional family and join the labor force by calling that “women can hold up half of the sky”, which means women were capable of doing anything that men can do and have a responsibility to do their share (NY Times). In addition to the seemingly equal gender role that reflects the need for labor rather than the necessity of equality between men and women, the Chinese communist government, in its following decades of dominance, has changed the child policy six times in response to major social changes that had

Even though it fights to solve a social problem, overpopulation, it violates several rights in order to accomplish this one goal. Although overpopulation is the main reason for this policy, there are alternatives such as educating people about overpopulation and how it affects the country. Due to this law, women suffer through procedures that go against their personal beliefs. This law has also broken up families because most men would prefer having a son than a daughter, causing emotional stress on the mother. China’s one-child policy violates human rights because it is forcing

As science advances, it is becoming very common for parents from all over the world to select their babies gender by abortion. However, this trend is unacceptable and detrimental to the natural balance of things, society and the future of humanity.

From family inherited “secrets” about what food to eat or which position to engage in during coitus to medical interventions for the implantation of a specific sexed fetus, sex-selection has been – and continuous to be – a reality of human reproduction. It will likely continue to be a reality – whether others agree or disagree – until authorities become more stringent in the application and regulation of legal policy (e.g., spending more resources on preventing and catching practices and individuals who perform sex selective services). But such force is an action unjustifiable when the question of whether sex selection is ethical or not still persists. The key here, is thus, to put to rest the concern of right and wrong and show, once and for