The Ultimate Sexual Degradation : While some talk population control, Bhutto denounces the killing <i> in utero </i> of girl babies.

I ask every one of them, lying on their backs with that telltale bulge, “So, would you like a boy or a girl?” It’s a question that passes the time as I measure the height of their uteruses and prepare to listen for their babies’ heartbeats. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a bunch of crude statistics on their replies. The most common answer is, “I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s healthy,” followed by, “My husband (boyfriend) wants a boy.” A couple of pregnant women have even lashed out with the comment that they wouldn’t wish a female sex on their poor innocent babies; women just suffer too much in this world.

So the impassioned plea of Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, at the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing for an end to female infanticide came as no surprise to me. The ultimate act of devaluation of a human being is an inflicted death. In battle, we devalue the enemy so we can more easily kill him. In female infanticide, we devalue the worth of half of mankind.

But Bhutto did not go far enough. China is one of the world’s leaders in the expurgation of females and uses its emerging technological sophistication to do so. Practically every little Chinese village boasts an ultrasound machine because expectant families, being limited to one offspring each by the government’s population policies, want to make darn sure that one child is a boy. If a female fetus floats across the ultrasound screen, her genitalia condemn her to death in utero.

Do Chinese families hate girls so much? My guess is that the desire for male offspring is deeply rooted in the traditional social life of the people. Sons are responsible for and capable of providing economically for aged parents in a country that has known no other social security. Daughters join other families through marriage and assume responsibility for someone else’s aged parents. Who wouldn’t want a boy under those circumstances? Nor is the problem of female infanticide, in or out of the uterus, limited to China. One Indian clinic did 8,000 abortions based on ultrasound information; more than 7,000 of them were of female fetuses. It is apparent that in disadvantaged nations, male births confer economic salvation upon parents. But how do sophisticated Western countries with strong entitlement programs for the elderly justify their preponderant desire for male births?

I’m afraid that here we will have to invoke the old conundrum that biology is destiny. Females still bear offspring, and they do so not in old age, but at the height of their physical and intellectual lives. So males have started the race toward power and accomplishment while females sit on the starting line suckling an infant.

Which is why there are such heated arguments among abortion providers over the ethics of aborting fetuses based on the parents’ desire for offspring of a specific sex. But a U.S. delegate involved in the planning of the Beijing for the fourth World Conference on Women objected to the use of the term female feticide to condemn the killing before birth of females just because they were girls. Why? Female feticide accomplishes the goal of reducing world population. If males of the next generation have fewer females to mate with, there will be fewer children born.

I would toss this question to feminists of every stripe: Is there any real difference, morally, between killing your little daughter in or out of the womb? Once a sex is dehumanized, slated for death because of its biology, where that death takes place is of little moment. So all of us, pro-life and pro-choice alike, must take seriously this fatal devaluation of the contributions females make to our existence as a species. Bhutto needs worldwide affirmation as she battles female genocide at all stages of the life cycle.

And isn’t it interesting that a delegate from a country whose national religion is perceived as so repressive toward women is the one to address female infant murder, the ultimate sexual degradation.