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Last week, when Ross Douthat made a case for "regulating abortion," I asked him and other pro-lifers how far we should go. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act has a maximum jail sentence of two years for doctors who perform the forbidden procedure. Is that the kind of regulation we should apply to abortions? Would the country stand for it?
Today, let's turn the tables on those of us who oppose abortion regulation. How far should we go? Would you oppose regulation even of abortions aimed at preventing the births of girls? Because there's increasing evidence that such abortions, which take place by the millions in Asia, are now being done by the thousands in the United States as well.
Let's start with the data noted here last year, when
economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund published an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examining the ratio of male to female births in "U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents." Among whites, the boy-girl ratio was essentially constant, regardless of the number of kids in a family or how many of them were girls. In the Asian-American sample, the boy-girl ratio started out at the same norm: 1.05 to 1. But among families whose first child was a girl, the boy-girl ratio among second kids went up to 1.17 to 1. And if the first two kids were girls, the boy-girl ratio among third kids went up to 1.5 to 1. This 50 percent increase in male probability is directly contrary to the trend among whites, who tend to produce a child of the same sex as the previous child.
A recent paper by economist Jason Abrevaya adds:
The evidence from the California natality data is particularly striking for Indian births between 1991 and 2005: second-born children are 0.9 percentage points more likely to be boys, third-born children 6.6 percentage points more likely, and fourth-born children 8.1 percentage points more likely. Moreover, Indian parents are significantly more likely to have a boy (and a terminated pregnancy since last birth) if they have had only daughters previously. The simple framework of Section 4.5 suggests that the unusually high boy percentages among third- and fourth-born Indian children in California would be consistent with gender-selective abortion rates of around 10%. ...
Using census data, Abreveya estimates that from 1991 to 2004, U.S. families of Chinese or Indian descent aborted more than 2,200 fetuses just for being girls. (For the data, see Table 13 of his paper; he explains his calculations on Pages 23-24.)
Researchers had expected sex selection among Asians to decline as they became Americans. But in today's New York Times, Sam Roberts reports:
Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion. ... [A] number of experts expressed surprise to see evidence that the preference for sons among Asian-Americans has been so significantly carried over to this country.
Roberts quotes one woman who got pregnant with a boy after having two girls. The woman says flatly: "If the third one was going to be a girl, then I would say probably I would have terminated."
Should that abortion be allowed? And if legal intervention in such cases is unwise, should we do something short of that? Should schools teach that aborting girls is wrong? Should doctors counsel couples not to do it? Should community leaders speak out against it? The last president called for a culture of life. Should this president call for a culture of respect for women?
What about purveyors of sex selection? Roberts notes that at least one assisted reproduction provider, the Fertility Institutes, offers sex selection and "has unabashedly advertised its services in Indian- and Chinese-language newspapers in the United States." (The company has also promoted and withdrawn an offer to select embryos for "eye color, hair color and complexion.") This form of sex selection takes place when the offspring are tiny, dish-bound embryos, not fetuses. The clinic's medical director, Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, says the practice is "not harming anyone." Is he right? Should he be allowed to continue peddling sex selection (as he does in this video) to Asian-Americans? And if it's fine to advertise this service at the embryonic stage, why not at the fetal stage?
Absolutists on both sides need to think carefully. If you're pro-life, how far are you willing to go in regulating abortion? If you're pro-choice, how far are you willing to go in leaving it unregulated?
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Is the era of designer babies finally upon us?
Every week, it seems, we're told that this discovery or that technology might lead to "designer babies." I've heard this so many times that I've stopped taking it seriously. Genetic engineering always turns out to be more complicated than expected, and our latest technology always turns out to be less capable than advertised.
But now trait selection seems to be coming into view for real.
More here.
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Last week I wrote about the warranty on children killed by the recent earthquake in China. I referred to an exemption to the country's one-child policy, allowing parents who lost their kids to replace them. At one point, I asked, "Why should the warranty apply only to this earthquake? What about the floods of 1991 and 1998? What about the drought of 1988? How many couples lost their only kids in those calamities? Where's their compensation?"
Many of you wrote in to correct me, noting that the replacement allowance is a general rule under the one-child policy. I wasn't satisfied with these assertions, so I went to the Chinese government's Web site for clarification. After some digging around, the only direct nationwide statement I could find was in the "Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China," adopted in 2001. Here's the basic language (Article 18):
The State maintains its current policy for reproduction, encouraging late marriage and childbearing and advocating one child per couple. Where the requirements specified by laws and regulations are met, plans for a second child, if requested, may be made. Specific measures in this regard shall be formulated by the people's congress or its standing committee of a province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central Government.
And here's the sole reference to damaged children (Article 27):
Where the only child of a couple is disabled or killed in accidents, and the couple decides not to have or adopt another child, the local people's government shall provide the couple with necessary assistance.
So, the general policy is vague. Implicitly, at least, you can decide to have another child if yours is killed or even disabled, as long as the tragedy was an accident.
Slate's Lucy Morrow Caldwell contacted several China experts who helped us with the original "Explainer" on this topic. We couldn't find records of the policy being waived in previous disasters, but Vanessa Fong of Harvard and Wang Feng of the University of California confirmed that the policy has traditionally permitted a second child if the first is killed or disabled. Cindy Sun of Fudan University directed us to a May 28 statement from the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China. The statement includes a clause that an acquaintance of mine translates as follows:
To the families whose children were injured or killed in the earthquake, the benefit of additional birth should be given, according to the number, sex, and injury of the children who survived the disaster.
In other words, precise numerical replacement, with different values for boys and girls, since many rural parents are allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl.
We also found a link to the earthquake policy issued by the Family Planning Commission in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, which bore the brunt of the disaster. A second acquaintance paraphrases its main points this way:
1) A "green light" for parents whose only child was injured, disabled, or killed.
2) The government will proactively work with these parents if they wish to have another child. This includes registering them and providing reproductive services.
Here's his translation of the policy's fine print on injury or disability:
Medical identification shall be conducted on injured/disabled children of single-child families. If the child is certified to have second-degree or above injury or disability, the parents shall be assisted to apply for bearing a second child.
A third acquaintance translates the fine print somewhat differently:
For those whose only child was disabled in the earthquake, local Birth-Control Agencies shall record the cases and compare them to the "Medical Disability Standards for Children from One-Child Family." For those qualified, the local agencies shall help them file the applications for the birth of a second child. The Birth-Control Council of Chengdu city will perform medical assessment and approval process promptly.
One final note: Article 11 of Sichuan's family-planning regulations stipulates that couples may have a second child if "the first child has non-genetic defects and is unable to grow up to be a normal laborer."
So, here's the full policy, as far as I can piece it together from the available documents: You can replace your child (in the numerical sense) in the event of death or disability, as long as the cause was an accident. Extent of replacement depends on the number and sex of the children you lost. Replacement for disability requires medical certification that the damage is second-degree, as measured by official standards. Replacement is also available for disabling defects, but not if they're genetic, presumably because in that case the replacement might be similarly defective.
Got that? To me, it sounds a lot like the piece of paper that came with my PC monitor. So, there's your warranty. Let's hope you never have to use it.
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I feel strangely obliged to say something about today's dog-food story.
No, I'm not talking about food for dogs. I wish I were. I'm talking about making food from dogs—and serving it to people.
Yes, this is happening. It's been happening for a long time. I first wrote about it six years ago, when the soccer World Cup was coming to South Korea. In that country, at latest count, 2 to 4 million dogs are eaten each year. (This was shortly after I wrote about sex with dogs—but let's take our perversions one at a time.) Here are this week's developments, as reported yesterday by AFP:
Officials in the South Korean capital Seoul said Monday they will launch their first health inspection of illegal dog meat restaurants ... "We do not intend to regulate the selling of dog meat but to examine their safety," a food safety official told AFP ... The city will conduct regular inspections, publicize a list of restaurants that serve unhealthy dog meat and suspend their operations, he said. Such restaurants are technically illegal.
To avoid adverse publicity before the 1988 Olympics, the city banned dog meat and snake meat as "abhorrent food." But the order is now largely ignored.
"Many citizens enjoy dog meat despite the ban. But there have been no hygiene regulations on their slaughter and trade because dogs are not classed as livestock," the official said. The city government has proposed reclassifying dogs as livestock so it can set food safety standards. But the proposal, which will be sent to the central government next month, has sparked angry reactions from animal rights activists, who staged street protests and launched online signature campaigns.
Confused? I sure am. Let's sort this out. To comply with Western sensibilities, the Koreans officially banned dog meat. But they don't enforce the ban, presumably because they don't share the abhorrence. And why should they? Why exactly is it gross to eat dogs but OK to slaughter pigs, which, by most measures, are smarter? So we've started with irrationality compounded by hypocrisy.
Now we have a health problem. According to the article, Korean dog "slaughtering and processing is carried out in dirty environments and poses risks to diners' health." Why the dirty environments? Apparently because the formal ban prevents the government from classifying dogs as livestock so it can regulate their slaughter and processing as it does with pigs.
What are animal-rights activists doing about this? They're trying to stop the reclassification, which means, in effect, preserving the risks to human health.
In general, I have a soft spot for animal rights. Not just for adopting puppies, but for the broader agenda of recognizing higher animals as way smarter than we've given them credit for. I keep an entire directory of news clips about all the amazing things animals can do. (Here's a trivial example from this week's news file; here's a far more profound one from last week's file.) The reason we've underestimated animals is that we've overestimated ourselves. We haven't studied them carefully enough. When we do, we keep finding "new" abilities.
Conservatives who preach a binary distinction between human dignity and the status of animals will be in for many rude shocks as this research proceeds. And, for the rest of you, I'm sorry to say that your practice—and mine—of slaughtering and eating sentient beings will gradually be recognized, God willing, as barbaric and obsolete.
So that's my lefty position on eating animals. But I'm afraid it doesn't lead me to the same conclusion as the Korean animal-rights lobby. If dogs are no better than pigs, I don't see the point of maintaining the current hypocritical distinction, particularly at the expensive of human health.
The Korean debate also appeals to my libertarian pragmatism. One reason I'm against abortion bans is that abortions will happen anyway; they'll just be more dangerous to the born people involved, in addition to killing the unborn. The piety of being able to claim you've outlawed abortion doesn't amount to much next to the harm and suffering you cause by driving abortions underground. I'm for bringing it out in the open. I'd like to believe that if a practice is truly immoral and unnecessary, sunshine will lead to its erosion. In the case of abortion, the latest statistics seem to bear out that belief.
So I guess I'm for 1) getting rid of the hypocritical distinction between dogs and livestock, 2) legalizing and regulating dog meat like other meat, and 3) gradually persuading everybody, including us pious Westerners, to stop eating meat.
Note to self: How do I square this with my previous piece about fetal sex selection, which warned that reducing regulation of an abhorrent practice to "a mere question of consumer protection" leads us to declare it "adequately regulated" and no longer taboo? I'll have to keep, um, chewing on that one. In the meantime, all you pro-life vegetarians can feel free to consider me a hypocrite.