Abortion and the Demographic Disappearance of Women

They say that demographics are destiny. Think of the birth spike after WWII and how, in conjunction with our short-sighted welfare policies and the self-centeredness of that generation, it will bankrupt the country over the course of the next 20 years.

So I occasionally post on demographic issues.

Mara Hvistendahl's startling data in Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men demands the attention of feminists, abortion advocates, economists, and students of international affairs. Jonathan Last reviews it for the Wall Street Journal in "The War Against Girls."

All things being equal, the biological ratio of boy to girl births is always between 104-106:100. Only unnatural intervention can change this. Widespread abortion of baby girls in the womb would shift the birth ratio further in favor of boys.*

What we now know is that if you provide free access to abortion and if people can know the sex of the child ahead of time, the ratio of boys to girls will climb dramatically in favor of boys. People are more inclined to kill their baby girls. Hvistendahl reports that this is most true when women make the decision.

So how do things stand in the world?

> "today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls"

> "In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark"

> "Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120"

> "In 1989, the sex ratio for first births [in South Korea] was 104 boys for every 100 girls—perfectly normal. But couples who had a girl became increasingly desperate to acquire a boy. For second births, the male number climbed to 113; for third, to 185. Among fourth-born children, it was a mind-boggling 209."

So what's the difference between a world remarkably more full of men than women? Men and women are the same, right? It's sexist to make distinctions, right? Or is that an 80s nostrum?

Predictably, it makes for a more violent world. Lots more young men without families to restrain them and turn their energies toward industrious pursuits means crime and social instability. In politically less stable countries, it means pools of manpower from which rising tyrants can draw armies to overthrow existing governments, whether popular governments or other tyrants.

The high concentration of unmarried men in the post-Civil War wild west surely had a lot to do with why it was as wild as it was. "In 1870, for instance, the sex ratio west of the Mississippi was 125 to 100. In California it was 166 to 100. In Nevada it was 320. In western Kansas, it was 768." The author "visits the Nanjing headquarters of the "Patriot Club," an organization of Chinese surplus men who plot war games and play at mock combat."

The economics of this unnatural situation is a fascinating study on its own: sharply increased savings rates, demand for U.S. Treasury bills (and for gold, I would add), increased attraction of prostitution as a way for poor families to turn daughters into income.

The obvious conclusion is that abortion is unnatural and wrong and leads to unhappy consequences as all unnatural behavior does.

Western feminists no doubt will cling to their abortion rights, and advocate banning sex screening or any advance notice of the a child's sex. Or they will push for a worldwide education campaign for the value of little girls. Sadly, Hvistendahl is herself an anti-Christian feminist, and worries that the "Christian right" will use these findings to threaten our precious abortion rights. She chooses rigorous government enforcement of a ban on sex screening. The reviewer notes, "It is telling that Ms. Hvistendahl identifies a ban on abortion—and not the killing of tens of millions of unborn girls—as the 'worst nightmare' of feminism."

Last, who is a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, concludes wisely:

Despite the author's intentions, "Unnatural Selection" might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of "choice." For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.'"


This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it.

Unnatural Selection is published by PublicAffairs (314 pages, $26.99).

*I have changed this paragraph in response to a reader comment.

**********
This article has stirred up a lot of discussion. Here is Ross Douthat in the New York Times: "160 Million and Counting."

Civilizational Suicide Part II

It is not only the Russians and the Chinese who have a demographic problem (follow the link to "The Withering Away of Russia," "President of a Disappearing Russia," and "Cradle Robbing in China"). It is very much a European and, yes, even a North American problem. Seven million people have viewed this "Muslim Demographics" video. See what you think.



The problem with video arguments is that they generally do not support what they say with footnotes. How true are these claims? The 8.1 fertility rate among Dutch Muslims seems overstated. No country in the world has a rate anywhere near that high. Also it does not account for immigrant rates dropping once their community settles into prosperity. This video questions some of the figures.



Nonetheless, we most certainly have a problem. When I was in high school, we were warned of an overpopulation problem. The planet, we were told, could not support the world population growing as it was. They gave us the figures, made their scientific projections, and assured us that having babies was a form of planetary suicide. Here we are just one generation later, and we're vanishing from the face of the earth.

The CIA World Factbook estimates that for 2009, 104 of the 225 countries (including the EU) have a fertility rate of less than the 2.11 needed for replacing a previous generation. For example:

USA 2.05 (not the 1.6 that the video claims)
France 1.98
Sweden 1.67
Netherlands 1.66
Britain 1.66
Canada 1.58 (notice they lag far behind their liberty-oriented American neighbor)
European Union 1.51
Germany 1.41
Italy and Spain 1.31

That's Europe.

But many other countries have extremely low fertility rates. Our major geo-political competitors are also doing poorly. China has a fertility rate of 1.79 and Russia a devastating 1.41. The industrialized East is rapidly depopulating. Japan and South Korea are at 1.21. Taiwan is 1.14 and Singapore has a rate of only 1.09. Poor Eastern Europe is doing even more poorly than their cousins to the west. The entire region is reproducing itself at a rate between only 1.2 and 1.5 per couple, except for Albania, a country close to my heart, which is close to thriving at 2.01. It is not just the rich materialist nations that are declining. Poor materialist countries are also languishing. Cuba's rate stands at 1.83, and Vietnam at 1.61.

Iran is not atheist and materialist, but their fertility rate is 1.71. Perhaps oil funded social security programs are the cause.

I would not presume to speak with confidence on the situation in places like Vietnam or Chile (1.92), but what is bringing the West to this civilizational suicide is fairly obvious. It is first of all self-indulgent secular materialism. If this world is all there is and if the fundamental good is my own comfortable self-preservation, then the only reason for having children at all is to provide for one's old age when one is no longer able to work. The wealthy of course don't have that concern, and so have no need of children beyond carrying on the family name, if that is even an issue.

The welfare state removes this concern for everyone. The state provides for your old age, as does a growing economy together in conjunction with wise investments. Medicare and Social Security give you all the benefits of children without the expense and the headaches.

Lastly, there is feminism, the all purpose poison. When we break down all sorts of barriers--cultural, legal, logistical, etc.-- so that women may enter the workforce and pursue any career they choose, it is soon culturally expected that they will take this course. It also becomes economically necessary. Salaries adjust so that one income is no longer sufficient for a middle class way of life. Children become both too expensive and too inconvenient to have more than one or two of them.

The United States has by far the highest fertility rate (2.05) of all western industrialized nations (though followed closely by France at 1.98, oddly enough). My suspicion is that this has something to do with the unusually great strength of religious faith among Americans.

Catholics used to be known for their large families, but they have conformed to the culture and are pursuing their enlightened self-interest like everyone else. You still see large families with four to eight children in some Evangelical churches, but they are exceptional. If people who know the Lord and trust him to provide for their families and bless both them and the world through their families do not have but one or two children*, what hope is there that anyone else will populate our future, and thus that America and the West will have a future?

What I find most interesting about this video is the call to action for Christians at the end of it. The call to action is to evangelize Muslims (a good thing, in my view), not to have large families. Having a large family and taking the necessary steps to raise your children in godliness is a profoundly important way of loving your neighbor. With that in mind, examine yourself for what your attitudes are with regard to (1) self-indulgent secular materialism, (2) the welfare state, and (3) feminism, or the interchangeability of men and women in society. Are you part of our civilizational suicide or part of the remedy?

With a view to that, here is the first of several parts of Mark Steyn's Heritage Foundation speech, "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It" (Jan. 10, 2007). You can navigate your way to the rest of it on YouTube. He describes how Europe is depopulating itself irreversibly and allowing itself to be replaced demographically by Muslims through immigration and much larger families.

On the demographic problem and the general civilizational collapse, you may explore this bibliography.

Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis.

Melanie Phillips, Londonistan.

Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.

Walter Laqueur, The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent.

George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.

Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.

Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization.

Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's Too.

*Keep in mind that some people are biologically unable to have children or have not been able to have more than one or two. Furthermore, some people have had to limit the size of their family for medical reasons. So we can make these broad observations and judgments, but no one should jump to conclusions regarding particular couples.

Cradle Robbing in China

Zhou Yuwei poster from the 1980s promoting China's one-child policy

Stefan R. Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Collection

The world is so full of suffering that, to a large extent, we have to blind ourselves to it just to function. One of the most heart rending tragedies is to lose a child, especially one's only child.

The Chinese government's economically stupid and morally horrific policy of allowing families only one child has played itself out in various predictable ways. Because of the Chinese preference for boys on account of issues related to dowries, inheritance, and old age security, not only have people been killing and abandoning their baby girls, they are now stealing other people's baby boys.

The New York Times reports this in "Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions" (Apr. 4, 2009).

The government is no help in providing the basic service that it is ordained to provide (1 Peter 2:14). "In case after case, they said, the police insisted on waiting 24 hours before taking action, and then claimed that too much time had passed to mount an effective investigation."

Several parents, through their own guile and persistence, have tracked down surveillance video images that clearly show the kidnappings in progress. Yet even that can fail to move the police, they say. “They told me a face isn’t enough, that they need a name,” said Cai Xinqian, who obtained tape from a store camera that showed a woman leading his 4-year-old away. “If I had a name, I could find him myself.”

"[T]he police prefer not to even open a missing person’s inquiry because unsolved cases make them appear inefficient, reducing their annual bonuses." There's an interesting incentive system. Bonuses that actually discourage people from doing their jobs faithfully.

Meanwhile, the government expects people to love the state more than they love their own children. "Last September, about 40 families traveled to the capital to call attention to the plight of abducted children. They staged a brief protest at the headquarters of the national television broadcaster, but within minutes, dozens of police officers arrived to haul them away. “They dragged us by our hair and said, ‘How dare you question the government,’ ” said Peng Dongying, who lost her 4-year-old son."

“There is a hole in our hearts that will never heal,” said one father who could be any of these grieving parents.

Oddly enough, in this ostensibly communist country, there is no "real social safety net" that would obviate the need security that a son is supposed to provide.

With this tragedy in mind, it would be well for us to consider on this Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday that God "gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16) to save us from the self-absorption that leads people to do behave this way and--let's be honest--that is in all of us in one God-denying, neighbor-sacrificing form or another.

John 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

1 John 4:9-10: "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

The Principle of Population

In my continuing concern over the politics of shrinking populations, I noticed this Break Point article by Chuck Colson -- "Japan's Unique Crime Problem," January 8, 2009.

Japan has a strikingly low crime rate for a tightly packed, industrialized country. But they are seeing an increase in "property crime such as shoplifting, pick pocketing, and embezzlement, but also a rise in violent crime." What makes this especially interesting however is the demographic group largely responsible for the mayhem--senior citizens.

Between 2000 and 2006, the number of Japanese over 70 charged with a crime more than tripled—to nearly 30,000 a year. Assaults have risen 17-fold and shoplifting and pick pocketing four-fold in the past decade. Even murder rates among the elderly are rising. All told, Japanese senior citizens were responsible for one in seven crimes, up from one in 50 in 1990.

The reason for this is Japan's plummeting birth rate.

An important part of the explanation lies in the increasing isolation of Japan’s elderly. Japan’s microscopic birthrate has produced an aging population with no one to care for it, whether children or paid caretakers. Japanese elderly are so starved for companionship that they buy talking dolls they think “are actual grandsons and granddaughters,” according to the manufacturer. Japan’s demographic collapse—the product of plummeting marriage and birth rates—has weakened the Japanese family and, with it, the entire society.

If we kill off our children, or radically restrict their number in other ways, and if we school them in selfishness when we do have them, we should not be surprised if we end up lonely and poor in our old age.

Break Point provides this reading list.

“Silver-Haired Shoplifters On the Rise In Japan,” Washington Post, 30 November 2008.

“Elderly Offenders on Rise,” Japan Times, 16 October 2008.

Justin Norrie, “Japan Tremor as Geriatrics Lead Crime Wave,” The Age.com, 3 May 2008.

“A Day without Mexicans: Demographics in the Developing World,” BreakPoint Commentary, 11 June 2008.

“Demographics and Prosperity: Demographic Winter and the Economy,” BreakPoint Commentary, 10 June 2008.

“Demographic Winter: Where Have All the Children Gone?,” BreakPoint Commentary, 9 June 2008.

The Withering Away of Russia

In the midst of our problems, it is well to reflect on the even greater problems that are overwhelming our enemies and those who are not exactly friendly toward us. Oil prices below $40 a barrel are devastating Putin's Russia, Chavez's Venezuela, and the Islamic Republic (Iran). In addition, Saudi princes have reportedly lost billions of dollars on their American investments. That has to be bad news for their al Qaeda darlings.

Russia's problems extend far beyond the current budget shortfall, however, and they could not be more fundamental. The nation is simply disappearing. Marx predicted the withering away of the state under communism. Though in fact quite the opposite happened, what has been happening since the 1960s is a withering away of the Russian population ("The Incredible Shrinking People," The Economist, Nov. 29, 2008).

Russia’s demography befits a country at war. The population of 142m is shrinking by 700,000 people a year. By 2050 it could be down to 100m. The death rate is double the average for developed countries. The life expectancy of Russian males, at just 60 years, is one of the lowest in the world. Only half of Russian boys now aged 16 can expect to live to 60, much the same as at the end of the 19th century.

Population decline has obvious implications for economic life.

Russia’s demographic crisis is one of the main constraints on the country’s economy. Although Russia’s population has been ageing, over the past decade the country has enjoyed a “demographic dividend” because the age structure was in its favour. This dividend has now been exhausted and the population of working age will decline by about 1m a year, increasing the social burden on those that remain. Over the next seven years Russia’s labour force will shrink by 8m, and by 2025 it may be 18m-19m down on the present figure of 90m.

Behind the demographic crisis is a health crisis, and behind that is moral and political ruin. During the Cold War, "whereas the West invested heavily in health-care systems and better lifestyles, Russia was putting its financial and human capital into the arms race and industrialisation."

If life expectancy in Russia had improved at the same pace as in the West, the country would have had an extra 14.2m people between 1966 and 2000, adding 10% to the population. The Soviet Union’s spending on health care was less than a quarter of the American figure. The Communist Party elite was well looked after, but ordinary people were less fortunate.

Alcoholism is a particular problem. Russians are literally drinking themselves to death at a staggering rate.

Alexander Nemtsov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, ...estimates that nearly 30% of all male deaths and 17% of female deaths are directly or indirectly caused by excess alcohol consumption and that over 400,000 people a year die needlessly from drink-related causes, ranging from heart disease to accidents, suicides and murders. ...The average Russian gets through 15.2 litres of pure alcohol a year, twice as much as is thought to be compatible with good health. ...Tens of thousands a year die of alcohol poisoning, against a few hundred in America.

This moral and health problem stems from a long history of tyranny and the political culture it has fostered. "Russian history, particularly in the 20th century, has encouraged the view that life is cheap. But there is also a strong self-destructive streak in the national character. Drinking yourself to death is one of the most widely used methods of suicide."

The article also mentions AIDS ("By 1997 the number of cases had grown to 7,000. Now the official figure is over 430,000, the largest in Europe. The real number could be double that, according to the World Health Organisation. ...Some two-thirds are drug-takers, but the epidemic is now spreading to the general public.") and TB ("Last year 24,000 people died of the disease, almost 40 times as many as in America.").

For more details in a previous post, see "President of a Disappearing Russia."

Harold adds:

That's quite a terrible irony David lines out--Marxist theory called for the withering away of the state, but instead created the conditions for the destruction of the society it hijacked. This is a sobering thing to witness--the demise of a modern nation state within such a compressed time frame--and that too, under the aegis of Enlightenment-spawned "Reason", the supposed guarantor of life and light, peace and good will among men, called to their highest rational selves. So much for man on his own, and godless communism. Yet the gathering momentum of atheism in the West continues apace--as if the hellish outcomes of the French Revolution, the many and varied strains of attempted communism across the globe, and Hitler's anti-Jewish, anti Christian, fascist Reich had never happened. Our current crop of geniuses will no doubt succeed where these others have failed. The struggle against the principalities and powers sponsoring this attack on the true, the good , and the beautiful will not end until, as C.S. Lewis phrased it, the Author of the play walks on stage. Until then, we are all witness to tragedy.

The Way Forward--Maybe

This assessment is by turns optimistic and sobering. Tony Blankley holds up Benjamin Disraeli, who used conservative principles to figure out how to ride the wave of change in England. That's the optimistic part, which shows it is possible to pull off something like what Republicans are going to need to do.

But he also warns there is no getting around addressing the burgeoning Hispanic population. This is sobering because even though there are strong conservative touch points available in this population--their family values are strong, their faith is strong, their strong work ethic is typical of immigrants of all sorts--the hard left has been at work these past decades here as well. La Raza has many Latinos thinking they are merely taking back what racist Americans took from them, and they do not recognize any such status as "illegal immigrant". I would expect an immigration bill in Congress fairly soon that recognizes a large percentage of illegal immigrants here now as citizens, which will buy their loyalty for generations. I don't know how Republicans can outbid Democrats on this while adhering to any notion of the nation state that we are familiar with. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new influx of illegals based on the prospects for citizenship--which in a down economy will prominently feature welfare benefits that far exceed what they can get in Mexico. The health insurance plan we get out of this Congress will absolutely include illegals--another magnet. Oh, and we'll be paying some substantial portion of the 5 million mortgages given to illegal immigrants during the past half-dozen years of the Fannie Mae bubble. If you're an illegal, it's all good with the Democrats.

Much depends on how long the Democrat hallucination of prosperity through expropriation will keep its grip on the country. For unless and until Latinos and substantial portions of the rest of the demographic groups under its spell of are jolted awake, conservatives can only try to prevent the worst excesses of an America seriously playing with socialism. Only when the narcotic wears off will conservatives have an audience again among those whose votes will be needed to turn this thing around.

President of a Disappearing Russia

 

The Russians have elected Dmitri Medvedev as their new president on the friendly advice of the (sort of) outgoing Vladimir Putin. If there have been themes in the Putin presidency they would be kleptocracy, (quietly) re-establishing the KGB and restoring the greatness of Russia. Partly on account of rising oil prices and partly through diplomatic obstinacy, Putin is widely credited with returning Russia to the position of major international player. But this illusion cannot be maintain given the alarming trend of Russian demographics over the last 15 years.

Chart: news.bbc.co.uk

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the population of Russia went into remarkable decline. In 2000, President Putin made it a priority to reverse this trend but on it goes. First a growing economy need a growing population. A shrinking population portends economic implosion. Furthermore, a shrinking economy is symptomatic of deeper and profoundly distressing problems.

In 2000, the BBC reported that "Drug use, alcoholism and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are leading reasons for the decline, said Murray Feshbach, a senior scholar at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson Center....About 15% of Russian couples are infertile, he said. And as many as 75% of women experience serious medical problems during pregnancy." In 1999, the fertility rate was 1.17. The replacement rate simply for a stable population is 2.5.

Feshbach said that STDs are a big part of the problem. "'There's syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia, HIV/Aids, prostitution,' he said. He estimates that there are between 450,000 and 500,000 cases of syphilis in Russia, out of a population of 145 million." He also remarked that these diseases affect the health of those who are born, and thus their ability to function (he said their "quality," but we know what he means).

Life expectancy for a man in Russia is 59, and for a woman it is 72. Alcoholism continues to be a huge problem. In 1999, the United Nations Human Development Report ranked Russia 72nd of the 174 countries surveyed.

Unless they can stabilize their people morally, give them economic hope for the future, and attract immigrants, Russia is headed for the "failed state" category. China is facing similar demographic problems. They have an annual economic growth rate of about 10%, and yet their population is approaching decline. In the last decade, China has seen significant decrease in population under the age of 20. In the next 15 years, they will see a shrinking population of people under 50. China's problem has not been syphilis. Rather, they have been systematically killing off their own children. Sin has natural consequences. Perhaps our own workforce problem, manifesting itself in illegal immigration (the complaint of the right) and outsourcing (the complaint of the left) has something to do with our less systematic killing of our children since Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right.