Sex selection and science
Jun. 23rd, 2011 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexThis started with a friend's post about Asia's "missing girls." The linked story in the Boston Globe talks about Mara Hvistendahl's book Unnatural Selection in which she documents how the technologies of low-cost ultrasound and easy access to safe abortions have made sex selection choices available to millions of people who didn't have the conscious choice before.
The discussion on that entry centered around cultural practices, but missed a key point which the Globe also misses but which Hvistendahl emphasized in her interview on Morning Edition: this is not the transfer of older sex-selection practices such as infanticide into a new realm. This is 160 million ADDITIONAL imbalances introduced by technology on top of those other practices. The introduction of the new technologies has made elective abortions for sex selection purposes more widespread.
Hvistendahl goes further into debunking other popular myths such as the one that say that womens' disfavored position in Asian societies leads to this sort of sex selection, by pointing out comparisons with Arab and Muslim cultures that similarly disfavor women but that have roughly equal sex ratios at birth. Hvistendahl argues that the "dark history" of population control in Asia has led to a drop in family sizes and that as family sizes have dropped, the pressure on women to produce sons has increased dramatically.
Hvistendahl also points out a potentially uncomfortable fact, which is that Westerners also practice sex selection, though on a smaller scale, through the choice of which sex embryos to have implanted. We may criticize the sex-selection practices in Asian countries, but we have to admit that we do it, too. Ironically, white educated Westerners have a strong sex preference for girls. Make of that datum what you will.
Now comes Richard Dawkins into the fray, asking the question "Is Science To Blame?" Unfortunately he doesn't really answer it, other than to give the "we don't drop the bomb, we just tell you how to build the best one" response. He seems to generally assume Hvistendahl is anti-science, and seems to want to defend science as an enterprise above the fray.
She, however, argues in her blog response that she's not anti-science. However, she does point out that specific Western scientists pushed the development of sex-selection science - and deliberately exported that science to Asian countries - for reasons such as reducing population growth. Given those historical factors, it's not possible to look on this as a neutral result of technology. It is a consequent that could have been foreseen and perhaps should have given those men pause.
I find myself mostly on Hvistendahl's side on this one. Science qua science may indeed be something akin to the Platonic neutrality Dawkins seems to want, but science is done by scientists who are people with agendas for good or ill, and motives, and social plans that may not be pure "science" but that are intimately involved in the scientific enterprise that results in pure science being enacted in the public sphere.
Finally, I feel compelled to state for the record that I have always supported, and continue to support, a woman's right to choose if, when, and how she has children. I may not like the way this technology has been put into practice, but that draws me to critique the techniques of practice and social context, rather than opposing the underlying technologies of ultrasound and safe abortions.
The discussion on that entry centered around cultural practices, but missed a key point which the Globe also misses but which Hvistendahl emphasized in her interview on Morning Edition: this is not the transfer of older sex-selection practices such as infanticide into a new realm. This is 160 million ADDITIONAL imbalances introduced by technology on top of those other practices. The introduction of the new technologies has made elective abortions for sex selection purposes more widespread.
Hvistendahl goes further into debunking other popular myths such as the one that say that womens' disfavored position in Asian societies leads to this sort of sex selection, by pointing out comparisons with Arab and Muslim cultures that similarly disfavor women but that have roughly equal sex ratios at birth. Hvistendahl argues that the "dark history" of population control in Asia has led to a drop in family sizes and that as family sizes have dropped, the pressure on women to produce sons has increased dramatically.
Hvistendahl also points out a potentially uncomfortable fact, which is that Westerners also practice sex selection, though on a smaller scale, through the choice of which sex embryos to have implanted. We may criticize the sex-selection practices in Asian countries, but we have to admit that we do it, too. Ironically, white educated Westerners have a strong sex preference for girls. Make of that datum what you will.
Now comes Richard Dawkins into the fray, asking the question "Is Science To Blame?" Unfortunately he doesn't really answer it, other than to give the "we don't drop the bomb, we just tell you how to build the best one" response. He seems to generally assume Hvistendahl is anti-science, and seems to want to defend science as an enterprise above the fray.
She, however, argues in her blog response that she's not anti-science. However, she does point out that specific Western scientists pushed the development of sex-selection science - and deliberately exported that science to Asian countries - for reasons such as reducing population growth. Given those historical factors, it's not possible to look on this as a neutral result of technology. It is a consequent that could have been foreseen and perhaps should have given those men pause.
I find myself mostly on Hvistendahl's side on this one. Science qua science may indeed be something akin to the Platonic neutrality Dawkins seems to want, but science is done by scientists who are people with agendas for good or ill, and motives, and social plans that may not be pure "science" but that are intimately involved in the scientific enterprise that results in pure science being enacted in the public sphere.
Finally, I feel compelled to state for the record that I have always supported, and continue to support, a woman's right to choose if, when, and how she has children. I may not like the way this technology has been put into practice, but that draws me to critique the techniques of practice and social context, rather than opposing the underlying technologies of ultrasound and safe abortions.
The author argues this point
Date: 2011-06-23 09:12 pm (UTC)It may well be self-correcting in a generation or two, but along the way I think we'll see a great deal more pain. The problem is that the people who suffer for the choices (the extra males) aren't the ones making the sex-selection choices. I don't think that one or two generations of imbalance will correct cultural practices that are centuries old.