Now comes further evidence of this effect. Two days ago, 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.
This seems odd. Almost no one paid any attention to the issue of surrogate motherhood and the moral problems it presents, and now no one is paying any attention to this painful moral problem. Why? I continue to get the impression that the Anglicans have no ability to see the connection to modern science, scientism, and Christian theology.
Larry
OK, let’s assume for calculations that it is a 50-50 ratio, male to female. Let us look at the pregnant women who have had two girls already. Assume we have 100 of them who are pregnant. Then there are 50 female fetuses. (N.B. I am a physician, and fetus is not a demeaning term but rather simply a stage in embryology.) How many of these would need to be aborted to get a 1.5 to 1 ratio of boys to girls?
Simple algebra… Let x = this number of female fetus abortions. The number of deliveries would be 100 – x. The number of boys is 50. The number of girls is 50 – x. The ratio is then 50/(50-x). Setting this equal to 1.5, we have x = 16.7 or about 17.
Thus, in these immigrant groups, the women have a 17 % abortion rate (17 per 100 pregnancies) or 33% of pregnancies with female fetuses.
The statistics are horrifying in India and China, and it’s no surprise that the cultural preference for boys comes to America. One hopes this habit will disappear as the immigrants become American.
In India, unwelcome girl babies of upper and middle class families are aborted; those of the poor classes are killed after birth.