…or, you can NOT love them, apparently. I’ve included this article to simply underline the direction that our world-culture seems to be taking. It is actually more accurate to say our world is simply following the direction of many other cultures in history that tolerated gender selective infanticide. It seems that Moloch is alive, and still has an insatiable appetite for children.
New Study Shows China’s Population Seriously Skewed
Chinese males under the age of 20 outnumbered females of that same age range by more than 32 million in 2005, due in large part to the government’s one-child policy and its citizens’ use of sex-selection abortion and even abandonment, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. The study of 4.7 million people under the age of 20 in China covered every county in the country. It also found that in 2005 there were 1.1 million more baby boys born than baby girls. The study was published April 9. “Sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” the study says. Technically, China has a policy prohibiting sex-selective abortions, although the policy is largely ignored. China’s government instituted its one-child policy in the late 1970s in an effort to slow the birth rate of the world’s most populous country. Penalties for violations of the policy have included fines, arrests and the destruction of homes, as well as forced abortion and sterilization. Infanticide, especially of females, also has been reported. Because China’s culture has a strong preference for sons over daughters, the one-child policy has led to a sex imbalance. The program generally has limited couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. The male-to-female ratio for births in urban and rural areas is 119 to 100, the study said. But that ratio increases for second births in rural areas, where it is 146 males to 100 females, with nine provinces showing a ratio for second births of 160 to 100. (The normal ratio is about 105 to 100.) “China will see very high and steadily worsening sex ratios in the reproductive age group over the next two decades,” the paper said. “Enforcing the existing ban on sex selective abortion could lead to normalization of the ratios.” Baptist Press 4/13/09
In every instance of sin I can think of, pragmatism (“what works to get me what I want?“) is chosen over ethics (“what is the correct behavior, regardless of what I want?”). Any form of pragmatism that would lead a person to kill an unborn infant is tragic. A pragmatism that leads to killing an infant because of her gender? Perverse.
How should we respond to such barbarism? I can think of at least three ways… First, we should pray that God would grant our world a growing, universal value for all human life in all its stages. Our world is worth caring about, praying for, and not giving up on. Second, we must see to it that we, as Christians, practice what we preach–we must always seek to value and protect all human life in all of its stages and circumstances. (And I really do mean ALL.) This means that people don’t lose their intrinsic value because of their sin, politics, gender, nationality, sexual practices, religion, or any other variable. Finally, we should commit ourselves to speak of the simple truth whenever and wherever we can. I don’t mean harangue people with opinions and statistics, but intead, simply state the truth–ie, “China seems to be valuing the lives of male infants more than female infants, as suggested by the following statistics….” Simply tossing a morsel of truth into a sludge pond of darkness and lies will (Solzhenitsyn would say must) inevitably defeat the lies, and clean up the pond.
downtownpastor