"Men could start killing each other over women."

[KillerMuffin]

This hasn't been the case? Sorry couldn't resist.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=380920

Vietnam is drafting a law that would ban doctors from testing the sex of a fetus. Yes, this is a big thing. Quit rolling your eyes. The National Committe for Population and Family Planning has some big concerns here. The crux of the problem is that Vietnam has one of the highest rates of abortion. All families want sons, and daughters are secondary. There are more men than women and they think that this rate isn't natural. You can see the numbers in the link.

The concern is that there will eventually be a problem like the one China is having, a surplus of 100 million men over women.

In a lot of cultures a son takes predominace over a daughter. It is feasible that with the early gender detection tests, the daughters can be aborted before they've gotten to far along and the couple can try again for a son. It makes more sense than having a large family to get the sons they want.

However, there are problems with this, most of which are in the realm of morality and the use of abortion as female infantacide or not. There is also the question of whether or not sex testing will work.

What do ya'll think?

 

[XXplorher]

Isn't that what we've been doing since the dawn of time?

This just in:
Everything we DO - is to get your attention.

 

[OUTSIDER]

I think that the #1 selling item in China in about 10 or 20 years time will be mail order brides.

 

[bluntforcemama]

It makes me really sad to know that some people in this world don't think women are as valuable as men. I couldn't even conceive of having an abortion because I didn't like the sex of my child. It's MY child, no matter if it's male or female. Women who would terminate a pregnancy based on their unborn child's sex have some serious flaws in their ethics.

 

[cymbidia]

A preference for boys over girls is an ingrained part of many cultures and has been in place for millennia. No one can actually be surprised that modern scientific techniques for early gender determination is being used to select the sex of babies, right?

The only logical course of action is to keep all advanced science from any culture we don't like. If they're going to use science to methodically kill of female fetuses, if they are not enlightened enough to realize this is gonna cause them BIG ole problems down the road a ways, then they don't deserve to possess these techniques.

We'll share stuff like this with our friends, though, like the GB and Canada and Switzerland (all that chocolate!) - but they better not start going toward a gender imbalance either, by the gods, or we'll have to sit them in the corner next to Vietnam and all those kinda countries.

~~~

Ha ha ha.

Guys?
It surprises you that some countries are doing this? Really?
You didn't know about China?
You didn't know about cultural preferences for boys over girls?
You didn't realize that the Dark Side uses science, too?

Come on, guys. I thought you more sophisticated.
OF COURSE they'll do this. The slow unfolding of eons has instructed them in the unassailable fact that boys are more valuable than girls, that boys get further in life and can be an asset to parents in ways that girls cannot. In twenty years, when all those boys want to get married, all the poor families (cuz they buy brides outright there - just a little cultural thing) will be sorry, but that gender determination thigs IS gonna happen now. Bet on it.

Such is life... for them.

It's times like this you gotta send a little prayer up to whomever you pray to thanking them for having been born reasonably intelligent, in this time, into a situation that has allowed you to be computer literate in order to read this post.

You're lucky.
Many are not.
Those Vietnamese parents are just trying by whatever means they can to have a kid that will have a *teensy* bit more advantage in their society. Can you really blame them, even though you know it's incredibly wrong and shortsighted?

Can you blame any parents anywhere for taking whatever measures they can, desperate or not, to insure even a tiny bit of advantage for their offspring?

I can't.
Even though i know it's going to come back and bite them in the butt, i can't blame them for this, desperately wrong and shockingly shortsighted as it is from my privileged and advantaged perspective.

 

[Starfish]

Let's talk about biology now.


The pH of the vagina during conception is highly responsible for the sperm that survive. I won't go into the complicated stuff, but let me just say that the likelihood of conceiving a female is twice as likely as a male. This is simply due to the fact that male sperm can't survive in an acidic condition. They can only survive in alkaline conditions. Naturally alkaline conditions only arise in women who've had an orgasm. The natural pH of the vagina is 6.5, acidic. So, the favorablity, naturally, of the conception of a female is doubly high, because...

Alkaline= half chance male, half chance female..
Acidic= Only chance Female....


Well, so who is it that nature doesn't favor? I think is highly unnatural, and it goes against the principle that one man can impregnate hundreds of women for the sake of procreative survival of the species, but hundreds of men cannot make one woman more pregnant than she already is. This is the natural way of it.

Regardless of what Culture or Society has evolved into, I know that genetic variety, and the sheer populational aspects of women are far more essential to our survival as a species than men are. This being the only truth, that it is my mind that those practices are unnatural.

Abortion for that sake of not being able to provide for a child is one thing, but being exclusive like that is truly a form of infanticide, and is unjust in my eyes because it is one more thing that devalues women in an already stifling situation.