In a nutshell, the history is that in the mid- to late-twentieth century, Western liberals fretting over the global population explosion, began zealously spreading the gospel of unfettered reproductive rights, i.e., abortion on demand. The problem is that the right to abortion on demand was soon was coupled with emerging technologies that permitted the increasingly easy identification of the sex of the fetus. The result was sex-selected abortions. But even that was no problem at first, I mean, it's all about "choice", right? Besides, when women opt for male over female babies, the thinking was, they'll be less likely to have a second, or at least not several more in order to finally achieve that so-important male offspring. There are currently 160 million more males than females in Asia alone.
Troubled by all of this, Ms. Hvistendahl investigated and was surprised by what she discovered:
Then I looked into it, and discovered that what I thought were right-wing conspiracy theories about the nexus of Western feminism and population control actually had some, if very distant and entirely historical, basis in truth. As it turns out, Western advisors and researchers, and Western money, were among the forces that contributed to a serious reduction in the number of women and girls in the developing world. And today feminist and reproductive-rights groups are still reeling from that legacy.Still, she just cannot quite bring herself to concede that the other side, the pro-life side, is motivated by anything other than some medieval misogynist sensibility:
Anti-abortion groups and pundits have proven all too eager to to take on the issue, though they seem far more interested in driving home restrictions on abortion than they do in increasing the number of women in the world and protecting the rights of women at risk.There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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