Summary:
Population growth across the globe has slowed down from dire predictions made in the 1960's and 1970's about overpopulation and its disastrous effects. The slowdown in growth has been noticeable in Asia's 2 most populous countries, India and China. The dire forecasts about population were popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his Population Bomb and its consequences were hysterically hyped by books like Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Western donors congratulated themselves on a job well done while governments in Asia received more funding to propagate the family planning methods pioneered earlier in India and China. Scientists and social activists who pointed out the flaws in the population control approaches were ignored. Amartya Sen published his now famous article 'More than 100 million women were missing' in New York Review of Books in December 1990 which highlighted the data showing the imbalance in gender in Asian populations. The missing women in Amartya Sen's article were largely a result of the reduction in population growth rate achieved by an increase in sex ratio at birth (number of males per 100 females) through sex selection and abortions that flowed from population control decisions made by governments in India, China and South Korea with assistance from Western population scientists and philanthropic organizations including United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF), Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. The diagnosis for the missing women has focused on cultural explanations of Asians being innately disposed to favoring boys over girls. The author has shown how Western population scientists, demographers and philanthropists drove population control approaches predicated on technology instead of solutions focusing on investment in Women's education and empowerment.
Starting in the 1950's, Asian population growth was considered to be a threat to the existing global balance of power because of the urgent need to stop communism in Asian countries. Malthusian view of global overpopulation also drove Western organizations to force governments of India (on the threat of withholding food aid), China and South Korea (through military dictatorship propped up by the West) to put in place population control and family planning methods in 1960's and 1970's that initially focused on forced sterilizations of men. The Emergency period from 1975 - 1977 in India under Indira Gandhi represented a truly dark period in Indian Democracy when Indira Gandhi suspended the writ of habeas corpus and clamped down on political dissent. During the same period, Western organizations including IPPF and UNFPA worked hand in glove with Indira Gandhi's government to enable the worst excesses of forced mass sterilizations under Sanjay Gandhi, her son. When Emergency period ended in ignominy with the defeat of Indira Gandhi's Congress party at the hands of Janata Party in 1977, the campaign of forced mass sterilizations came to an end for Indian men but the pressure to rein in India's population remained. The focus for the Western organizations shifted to Indian women after studies showed that Indian couples prized boys over girls to the extent of repeatedly having girl children in the hope of having a boy. The Western organizations pushed sex selection and abortion as effective methods of population control in India. At the same time, technological breakthroughs like Amniocentesis provided population scientists and doctors with a method to determine the sex of the child and allow the parents to take a decision on carrying the pregnancy to term. The toxic combination of technological solutions and cultural preferences, both of which had Western demographers, population scientists and donors in a starring role, led to a skewing of sex ratio in India, China and South Korea that contributed to the missing women.
Conservative organizations including the Catholic Church have been steadfast in opposing abortion rights for women. Pro choice organizations in the West have been equally vociferous about ensuring women's right to an abortion. The politics in the West has obscured the push for a deeper analysis and reckoning for the missing women. The push for uninhibited abortion and sex selection has been championed by the same organizations that support abortion rights for women in the West including UNFPA and IPPF. The extent of coercion and outright abuse in India, China and South Korea led conservative organizations to use them as props for their campaign to ban abortion on a blanket basis in the West. It started with conservative activists succeeding in pushing the Mexico City policy that forces each US administration to support or deny funding for non governmental organizations that provide abortion services overseas. In keeping with the partisan nature of support for abortion, Republican presidents have mostly supported Mexico City policy while Democrat presidents have mostly opposed it. The push for evangelicals in US to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 US Presidential elections was driven partly by their conviction that Trump would keep in place Mexico City Policy restrictions. On the other hand, the denial on the pro choice side about the forced sterilizations, coerced and unsanitary sex selective abortions has put their credibility at a serious disadvantage in their support for a Woman's right to choose.
The perception of Asian people as being pragmatic and unsentimental in their reproductive choices has to do with the amount of resources, in money and material, that Western population scientists and donors poured into the continent to counter the growth of communism and later, as means for Asian governments to maintain levels of foreign aid than anything innate in their cultures. Recently, advances in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) like Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) allows parents to select for specific traits like color of their eyes and it is now widely available in China, US, India, Thailand
Analysis:
The ideal sex ratio at birth for humans throughout history has been 105 males for 100 females (usually varies between 104 and 106). The higher number of males is a reflection of the predilection for violence exhibited by men that often cuts their lives short. Ronald A Fisher showed how a sex ratio at birth with lower number of males per females would put parents of sons at an advantage since males would be facing greater demand among their mates. As a result, the sex ratio at birth would swing towards higher number of males per 100 females. Fisher's analysis applies only to natural variations in sex ratio at birth. At various eras in specific locations, the sex ratio has varied wildly - California had a sex ratio at birth of 166 in 1870, Medieval Portugal had 112 males for 100 females and 4th Century BC Athens had 143 - 174 males per 100 females. The higher the sex ratio has skewed towards males, the more violent and disruptive that society would become, with consequences for everyone living in that society (and in case of Portugal, impacting countries in Asian and African continents). The downfall of Manchu dynasty in China was the culmination of violent rebellions brought about by skewed sex ratio at birth leading to disgruntled males following fanatical leaders. In 2000, the sex ratio at birth in India was 111 males for 100 females, in China it was 121 males per 100 females, in Georgia it was 118 males per 100 females, in Azerbaijan it was 115 males per 100 males and in Armenia, it was 120 males per 100 females. Within India, there is significant variation between different regions - 126 males for 100 females in Northwest, 106 males per 100 females in Tamil Nadu, 104 males per 100 females in Kerala. Across the world, men from richer countries Taiwan/Singapore/South Korea) have taken to purchasing brides from developing countries like Vietnam and mainland China. At the same time, men from poorer countries have resorted to forced kidnapping of brides and soliciting prostitutes within their countries. Higher number of males also causes widespread dissemination of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases as these men serve as bridging population to propagate these diseases to otherwise healthy women they marry later.
The continued persistence of child marriage and polyandry in India is a reflection of the sex ratio at birth skewed heavily towards males. The reasons behind the high sex ratio at birth in India has to do with its colonial history. Prior to the arrival of British, there were no records for sex ratio at birth. When British started measuring the sex ratio at birth, they found significantly skewed measures across their dominion in India. They assumed the skewed measure as representative of the historical measure for sex ratio at birth in India without realizing the measures they put in place for revenue collection (Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari) caused it in the first place. Because the new measures of revenue collection were inflexible, Zamindars ended up losing their lands (as a result of which peasants and workers on those lands ended up worse off). British dutifully recorded the myriad ways Indians seemed to conceive of getting rid of their girl children and put in place punitive measures to discourage the practice through 1873 Female Infanticide Prevention Act that capped dowry and other marriage expenses. The effect of the Act was to cause a spike in female infanticide in India because dowry had developed as a system for families to provide property rights for their girl children after Permanent Settlement robbed girl children of their property rights that had existed prior to British arriving in India. Moreover, parents focused on giving birth to male children to ensure property stayed within the family. When families had girl children in the beginning, the parents tried for male children and only stopped when they had a male child ('Stopping Rule'). This resulted in increased size of the families. When parents could not come up with resources to feed their children, the girls in the family became casualties and the boys in the family became the beneficiaries of cost benefit calculations of parents. The consequence of increased female infanticides resulted in a high fertility ratio and a high sex ratio that also led to child marriages becoming common place as parents with male children moved to lock up marriage prospects for their kids as early as possible. After Independence, the Indian government did not overthrow British strictures but opted to work within the 'Steel Frame' that the British Raj had put in place. As a result, the sex ratio remained high even after Indian Independence.
In the 1950's, Western advisers looked at population of India and China through the prism of Communism. In their view, the more poverty India and China faced, the more attractive Communist ideology would be to them, thereby weakening the West further. As a result, they flooded India with population advisers and conditioned food and development aid with requirements to follow Western advisers' prescriptions on population control. From India's perspective, it paid to play the Communist and Capitalist world against each other to ensure support from both sides. Philanthropists in the West including John D Rockefeller III formed Population Council to primarily address overpopulation concerns about India. As time went on, they pushed for tougher population control measures in India and South Korea. In the beginning, Health ministry in India opposed the population control programs but foreign non governmental organizations got around the objections through subterfuge. As an example, Dr Sheldon Segal of Population Council smuggled in IUDs through Customs in his luggage as Christmas ornaments after Health ministry raised objections.
After Korean War, South Korea became a military dictatorship relying on US support and in addition to Taiwan and India, served as the Petri dish for population control experiments pushed by Population Council and assorted population control organizations (including IPPF and UNFPA). Some of the experiments proposed included adding sterilizing agents in food supply, creation of credit scheme for having children and compulsory sterilization of men with 3 or more children. With South Korea developing into an economic powerhouse under US umbrella, the population control measures were implemented on women with military precision and resulted in massive number of forced abortions, some of which happened to be sex selective.
With the publication of Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb in 1968, the hysterics about dangers of overpopulation in India and China reached a fever pitch. Brushing aside any contrary viewpoints, Western advisers for population control flooded New Delhi and found a willing ally in the Indian government. Indian elites looked at the burgeoning poor population in their midst with trepidation and welcomed the forced sterilizations of men as something that would redound to their country's benefit (one of the earlier ideas pushed by Western advisers was that a reduced population would make a country richer by providing for a better equitable distribution of resources). With politicians, elites and foreign advisers working hand in glove, the Indian government rolled out family planning programs (mostly involving forced sterilizations of men) through state governments. Lack of accountability at state level caused untold havoc among Indian men dragged against their will to sterilization camps or threatened with loss of property during slum clearance campaigns. As an example, governments in some states like Tamil Nadu pushed through rules denying pay raises to government employees with 2 or more children. Indian government officials and foreign population control advisers ignored consistent feedback about the coercion and intimidation involved in this campaign. By early 1970s, Green revolution in India had negated most of Paul Ehrlich's predictions but that inconvenient fact was ignored.
In 1975, Indira Gandhi promulgated Emergency where she shut down the writ of habeas corpus and arrested opposition politicians. At the same time, AIIMS provided the first Amniocentesis tests for determining sex of the fetus. During Emergency, Indira Gandhi assigned Sanjay Gandhi, her son, with carrying out population control measures across the country and he took things to an extreme and macabre end sterilizing 6.2 million men in 1977. 1977 was also when Emergency came to a close with the resounding defeat of Indira Gandhi to Janata Party. With the defeat of Indira Gandhi, all politicians learned their lesson of not putting Indian men under the knife. But with the unremitting pressure applied by Western organizations to bring their population under control, the Indian establishment went after the women for population control. With the spread of Amniocentesis, sex selection of fetus and consequent abortion of female fetuses became rampant. This was encouraged by Western advisers who came to the conclusion that sex selective abortion was an ethical and effective way of population control (Recent interviews with all those advisers have them engaging in revisionist history by maintaining that they called for more investment in Women's education and empowerment at that time). Between 1978 - 1983, an estimated 78000 female fetuses were aborted in India. It has now reached a point where politicians are disqualified from Panchayat elections for having more than 2 children. Riding on a wave of success, Western advisers pushed for liberalization of abortion laws in China, India and South Korea. In spite of religious and cultural taboos on abortion, Indian and South Korean governments pushed through liberal abortion laws that made Western advisers task easier. As a recognition of population control efforts in India and China, the first United Nations Population Award was awarded in September 1983 to Indira Gandhi and former PLA general in charge of population control in China, Qian Xinzhong.
During Cultural revolution, Chinese communists requested assistance with family planning from Western advisors. UNFPA signed a 50 million dollar agreement for its first population project in China. Communists put into motion recommendations from Western advisers and proceeded with one child policy. Chinese government and IPPF suppressed reports of coercion and intimidation of Chinese women to undergo abortions. A researcher for IPPF whose report on coercion was suppressed would go on to head an anti-abortion conservative group in US.
The general expectation among demographers and population scientists is that the sex ratio at birth usually gets closer to the ideal measure when an economy develops. However, the recent trends with sex ratio at birth for Asian countries have not followed that trend. Countries like India and China still have high sex ratio at birth even as their economies have developed rapidly. South Korea is usually considered an example of an advanced economy that has behaved according to demographers and population scientists' expectations. However, South Korea became an advanced economy in the 1980's and even now, it has a sex ratio at birth of 113, not close enough to ideal sex ratio. A similar transition with India and China would take much longer given they are still considered to be developing economies and the sex ratio at birth is much higher than it was for South Korea. The downside for South Korea has been that, with all the population control measures taken to reduce its population, its fertility ratio has stayed at 1.08, well below the replacement level at 2.1. As a result, South Korean government has outlawed abortions as a means of increasing the sluggish fertility rate. In recent years, governments in India have put in some effort to encourage equal treatment of sons and daughters. It started with Congress government and has continued with BJP government setting up new initiatives to value daughters. On average, women undergoing abortions are older, married and with kids in Asia. In the West, women undergoing abortions are younger, unmarried and without kids. It points to abortions being performed in families in Asia to abort girl fetuses till they get a boy.
The headlong rush into forced sterilizations, coercive sex selective abortions by Western organizations has placed the pro choice movement in a bind it has not yet gotten out of. Because the pro choice movement focuses only on the West, they have highlighted the right to have an abortion for a woman as their prime mover. However, the same organizations have a sordid history of supporting forced sterilizations and coercive sex selective abortion across the world in the name of population control. When they got involved in India, China and South Korea in 1960's and 1970's, those organizations were headed by men. In 1980's, these organizations had gotten more women in leadership positions who felt more comfortable pushing for pro-choice legislation. Among Americans of certain Asian descent (Chinese, Indians, Koreans), sex selective abortion occurs significantly higher than the broader population. Appealing to the broader population, pro choice organizations like NARAL Pro-choice America and National Organization for Women have not taken a stance on sex selection and as such, have not addressed the conundrum of abortion leading to sex selection (and ultimately working against girl children). The pro-choice movement is always at a disadvantage against the anti-abortion movement which has used coercive sex selective abortions in China and other Asian countries as a cudgel to lobby for blanket bans on abortion. Pro choice organizations in the West are now focusing on increased investment in Women's education and empowerment but their historical culpability in the forced sterilizations and abortions has made them ineffective messengers in this regard.
Other Books of Interest:
May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons - Elisabeth Bumiller
Shah Commission Report
The Camp of the Saints - Jean Raspail
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population - Matthew Connelly
Population growth across the globe has slowed down from dire predictions made in the 1960's and 1970's about overpopulation and its disastrous effects. The slowdown in growth has been noticeable in Asia's 2 most populous countries, India and China. The dire forecasts about population were popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his Population Bomb and its consequences were hysterically hyped by books like Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Western donors congratulated themselves on a job well done while governments in Asia received more funding to propagate the family planning methods pioneered earlier in India and China. Scientists and social activists who pointed out the flaws in the population control approaches were ignored. Amartya Sen published his now famous article 'More than 100 million women were missing' in New York Review of Books in December 1990 which highlighted the data showing the imbalance in gender in Asian populations. The missing women in Amartya Sen's article were largely a result of the reduction in population growth rate achieved by an increase in sex ratio at birth (number of males per 100 females) through sex selection and abortions that flowed from population control decisions made by governments in India, China and South Korea with assistance from Western population scientists and philanthropic organizations including United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF), Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. The diagnosis for the missing women has focused on cultural explanations of Asians being innately disposed to favoring boys over girls. The author has shown how Western population scientists, demographers and philanthropists drove population control approaches predicated on technology instead of solutions focusing on investment in Women's education and empowerment.
Starting in the 1950's, Asian population growth was considered to be a threat to the existing global balance of power because of the urgent need to stop communism in Asian countries. Malthusian view of global overpopulation also drove Western organizations to force governments of India (on the threat of withholding food aid), China and South Korea (through military dictatorship propped up by the West) to put in place population control and family planning methods in 1960's and 1970's that initially focused on forced sterilizations of men. The Emergency period from 1975 - 1977 in India under Indira Gandhi represented a truly dark period in Indian Democracy when Indira Gandhi suspended the writ of habeas corpus and clamped down on political dissent. During the same period, Western organizations including IPPF and UNFPA worked hand in glove with Indira Gandhi's government to enable the worst excesses of forced mass sterilizations under Sanjay Gandhi, her son. When Emergency period ended in ignominy with the defeat of Indira Gandhi's Congress party at the hands of Janata Party in 1977, the campaign of forced mass sterilizations came to an end for Indian men but the pressure to rein in India's population remained. The focus for the Western organizations shifted to Indian women after studies showed that Indian couples prized boys over girls to the extent of repeatedly having girl children in the hope of having a boy. The Western organizations pushed sex selection and abortion as effective methods of population control in India. At the same time, technological breakthroughs like Amniocentesis provided population scientists and doctors with a method to determine the sex of the child and allow the parents to take a decision on carrying the pregnancy to term. The toxic combination of technological solutions and cultural preferences, both of which had Western demographers, population scientists and donors in a starring role, led to a skewing of sex ratio in India, China and South Korea that contributed to the missing women.
Conservative organizations including the Catholic Church have been steadfast in opposing abortion rights for women. Pro choice organizations in the West have been equally vociferous about ensuring women's right to an abortion. The politics in the West has obscured the push for a deeper analysis and reckoning for the missing women. The push for uninhibited abortion and sex selection has been championed by the same organizations that support abortion rights for women in the West including UNFPA and IPPF. The extent of coercion and outright abuse in India, China and South Korea led conservative organizations to use them as props for their campaign to ban abortion on a blanket basis in the West. It started with conservative activists succeeding in pushing the Mexico City policy that forces each US administration to support or deny funding for non governmental organizations that provide abortion services overseas. In keeping with the partisan nature of support for abortion, Republican presidents have mostly supported Mexico City policy while Democrat presidents have mostly opposed it. The push for evangelicals in US to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 US Presidential elections was driven partly by their conviction that Trump would keep in place Mexico City Policy restrictions. On the other hand, the denial on the pro choice side about the forced sterilizations, coerced and unsanitary sex selective abortions has put their credibility at a serious disadvantage in their support for a Woman's right to choose.
The perception of Asian people as being pragmatic and unsentimental in their reproductive choices has to do with the amount of resources, in money and material, that Western population scientists and donors poured into the continent to counter the growth of communism and later, as means for Asian governments to maintain levels of foreign aid than anything innate in their cultures. Recently, advances in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) like Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) allows parents to select for specific traits like color of their eyes and it is now widely available in China, US, India, Thailand
Analysis:
The ideal sex ratio at birth for humans throughout history has been 105 males for 100 females (usually varies between 104 and 106). The higher number of males is a reflection of the predilection for violence exhibited by men that often cuts their lives short. Ronald A Fisher showed how a sex ratio at birth with lower number of males per females would put parents of sons at an advantage since males would be facing greater demand among their mates. As a result, the sex ratio at birth would swing towards higher number of males per 100 females. Fisher's analysis applies only to natural variations in sex ratio at birth. At various eras in specific locations, the sex ratio has varied wildly - California had a sex ratio at birth of 166 in 1870, Medieval Portugal had 112 males for 100 females and 4th Century BC Athens had 143 - 174 males per 100 females. The higher the sex ratio has skewed towards males, the more violent and disruptive that society would become, with consequences for everyone living in that society (and in case of Portugal, impacting countries in Asian and African continents). The downfall of Manchu dynasty in China was the culmination of violent rebellions brought about by skewed sex ratio at birth leading to disgruntled males following fanatical leaders. In 2000, the sex ratio at birth in India was 111 males for 100 females, in China it was 121 males per 100 females, in Georgia it was 118 males per 100 females, in Azerbaijan it was 115 males per 100 males and in Armenia, it was 120 males per 100 females. Within India, there is significant variation between different regions - 126 males for 100 females in Northwest, 106 males per 100 females in Tamil Nadu, 104 males per 100 females in Kerala. Across the world, men from richer countries Taiwan/Singapore/South Korea) have taken to purchasing brides from developing countries like Vietnam and mainland China. At the same time, men from poorer countries have resorted to forced kidnapping of brides and soliciting prostitutes within their countries. Higher number of males also causes widespread dissemination of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases as these men serve as bridging population to propagate these diseases to otherwise healthy women they marry later.
The continued persistence of child marriage and polyandry in India is a reflection of the sex ratio at birth skewed heavily towards males. The reasons behind the high sex ratio at birth in India has to do with its colonial history. Prior to the arrival of British, there were no records for sex ratio at birth. When British started measuring the sex ratio at birth, they found significantly skewed measures across their dominion in India. They assumed the skewed measure as representative of the historical measure for sex ratio at birth in India without realizing the measures they put in place for revenue collection (Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari) caused it in the first place. Because the new measures of revenue collection were inflexible, Zamindars ended up losing their lands (as a result of which peasants and workers on those lands ended up worse off). British dutifully recorded the myriad ways Indians seemed to conceive of getting rid of their girl children and put in place punitive measures to discourage the practice through 1873 Female Infanticide Prevention Act that capped dowry and other marriage expenses. The effect of the Act was to cause a spike in female infanticide in India because dowry had developed as a system for families to provide property rights for their girl children after Permanent Settlement robbed girl children of their property rights that had existed prior to British arriving in India. Moreover, parents focused on giving birth to male children to ensure property stayed within the family. When families had girl children in the beginning, the parents tried for male children and only stopped when they had a male child ('Stopping Rule'). This resulted in increased size of the families. When parents could not come up with resources to feed their children, the girls in the family became casualties and the boys in the family became the beneficiaries of cost benefit calculations of parents. The consequence of increased female infanticides resulted in a high fertility ratio and a high sex ratio that also led to child marriages becoming common place as parents with male children moved to lock up marriage prospects for their kids as early as possible. After Independence, the Indian government did not overthrow British strictures but opted to work within the 'Steel Frame' that the British Raj had put in place. As a result, the sex ratio remained high even after Indian Independence.
In the 1950's, Western advisers looked at population of India and China through the prism of Communism. In their view, the more poverty India and China faced, the more attractive Communist ideology would be to them, thereby weakening the West further. As a result, they flooded India with population advisers and conditioned food and development aid with requirements to follow Western advisers' prescriptions on population control. From India's perspective, it paid to play the Communist and Capitalist world against each other to ensure support from both sides. Philanthropists in the West including John D Rockefeller III formed Population Council to primarily address overpopulation concerns about India. As time went on, they pushed for tougher population control measures in India and South Korea. In the beginning, Health ministry in India opposed the population control programs but foreign non governmental organizations got around the objections through subterfuge. As an example, Dr Sheldon Segal of Population Council smuggled in IUDs through Customs in his luggage as Christmas ornaments after Health ministry raised objections.
After Korean War, South Korea became a military dictatorship relying on US support and in addition to Taiwan and India, served as the Petri dish for population control experiments pushed by Population Council and assorted population control organizations (including IPPF and UNFPA). Some of the experiments proposed included adding sterilizing agents in food supply, creation of credit scheme for having children and compulsory sterilization of men with 3 or more children. With South Korea developing into an economic powerhouse under US umbrella, the population control measures were implemented on women with military precision and resulted in massive number of forced abortions, some of which happened to be sex selective.
With the publication of Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb in 1968, the hysterics about dangers of overpopulation in India and China reached a fever pitch. Brushing aside any contrary viewpoints, Western advisers for population control flooded New Delhi and found a willing ally in the Indian government. Indian elites looked at the burgeoning poor population in their midst with trepidation and welcomed the forced sterilizations of men as something that would redound to their country's benefit (one of the earlier ideas pushed by Western advisers was that a reduced population would make a country richer by providing for a better equitable distribution of resources). With politicians, elites and foreign advisers working hand in glove, the Indian government rolled out family planning programs (mostly involving forced sterilizations of men) through state governments. Lack of accountability at state level caused untold havoc among Indian men dragged against their will to sterilization camps or threatened with loss of property during slum clearance campaigns. As an example, governments in some states like Tamil Nadu pushed through rules denying pay raises to government employees with 2 or more children. Indian government officials and foreign population control advisers ignored consistent feedback about the coercion and intimidation involved in this campaign. By early 1970s, Green revolution in India had negated most of Paul Ehrlich's predictions but that inconvenient fact was ignored.
In 1975, Indira Gandhi promulgated Emergency where she shut down the writ of habeas corpus and arrested opposition politicians. At the same time, AIIMS provided the first Amniocentesis tests for determining sex of the fetus. During Emergency, Indira Gandhi assigned Sanjay Gandhi, her son, with carrying out population control measures across the country and he took things to an extreme and macabre end sterilizing 6.2 million men in 1977. 1977 was also when Emergency came to a close with the resounding defeat of Indira Gandhi to Janata Party. With the defeat of Indira Gandhi, all politicians learned their lesson of not putting Indian men under the knife. But with the unremitting pressure applied by Western organizations to bring their population under control, the Indian establishment went after the women for population control. With the spread of Amniocentesis, sex selection of fetus and consequent abortion of female fetuses became rampant. This was encouraged by Western advisers who came to the conclusion that sex selective abortion was an ethical and effective way of population control (Recent interviews with all those advisers have them engaging in revisionist history by maintaining that they called for more investment in Women's education and empowerment at that time). Between 1978 - 1983, an estimated 78000 female fetuses were aborted in India. It has now reached a point where politicians are disqualified from Panchayat elections for having more than 2 children. Riding on a wave of success, Western advisers pushed for liberalization of abortion laws in China, India and South Korea. In spite of religious and cultural taboos on abortion, Indian and South Korean governments pushed through liberal abortion laws that made Western advisers task easier. As a recognition of population control efforts in India and China, the first United Nations Population Award was awarded in September 1983 to Indira Gandhi and former PLA general in charge of population control in China, Qian Xinzhong.
During Cultural revolution, Chinese communists requested assistance with family planning from Western advisors. UNFPA signed a 50 million dollar agreement for its first population project in China. Communists put into motion recommendations from Western advisers and proceeded with one child policy. Chinese government and IPPF suppressed reports of coercion and intimidation of Chinese women to undergo abortions. A researcher for IPPF whose report on coercion was suppressed would go on to head an anti-abortion conservative group in US.
The general expectation among demographers and population scientists is that the sex ratio at birth usually gets closer to the ideal measure when an economy develops. However, the recent trends with sex ratio at birth for Asian countries have not followed that trend. Countries like India and China still have high sex ratio at birth even as their economies have developed rapidly. South Korea is usually considered an example of an advanced economy that has behaved according to demographers and population scientists' expectations. However, South Korea became an advanced economy in the 1980's and even now, it has a sex ratio at birth of 113, not close enough to ideal sex ratio. A similar transition with India and China would take much longer given they are still considered to be developing economies and the sex ratio at birth is much higher than it was for South Korea. The downside for South Korea has been that, with all the population control measures taken to reduce its population, its fertility ratio has stayed at 1.08, well below the replacement level at 2.1. As a result, South Korean government has outlawed abortions as a means of increasing the sluggish fertility rate. In recent years, governments in India have put in some effort to encourage equal treatment of sons and daughters. It started with Congress government and has continued with BJP government setting up new initiatives to value daughters. On average, women undergoing abortions are older, married and with kids in Asia. In the West, women undergoing abortions are younger, unmarried and without kids. It points to abortions being performed in families in Asia to abort girl fetuses till they get a boy.
The headlong rush into forced sterilizations, coercive sex selective abortions by Western organizations has placed the pro choice movement in a bind it has not yet gotten out of. Because the pro choice movement focuses only on the West, they have highlighted the right to have an abortion for a woman as their prime mover. However, the same organizations have a sordid history of supporting forced sterilizations and coercive sex selective abortion across the world in the name of population control. When they got involved in India, China and South Korea in 1960's and 1970's, those organizations were headed by men. In 1980's, these organizations had gotten more women in leadership positions who felt more comfortable pushing for pro-choice legislation. Among Americans of certain Asian descent (Chinese, Indians, Koreans), sex selective abortion occurs significantly higher than the broader population. Appealing to the broader population, pro choice organizations like NARAL Pro-choice America and National Organization for Women have not taken a stance on sex selection and as such, have not addressed the conundrum of abortion leading to sex selection (and ultimately working against girl children). The pro-choice movement is always at a disadvantage against the anti-abortion movement which has used coercive sex selective abortions in China and other Asian countries as a cudgel to lobby for blanket bans on abortion. Pro choice organizations in the West are now focusing on increased investment in Women's education and empowerment but their historical culpability in the forced sterilizations and abortions has made them ineffective messengers in this regard.
Other Books of Interest:
May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons - Elisabeth Bumiller
Shah Commission Report
The Camp of the Saints - Jean Raspail
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population - Matthew Connelly
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