Preference for sons in Central Asia driving parents to abort baby girls

In Central Asia, a preference for sons is leading to sex-selective abortions and the deaths of thousands of girls in the womb. 

Key Takeaways:

• Some parts of Central Asia are seeing imbalanced sex ratios, likely due to sex-selective abortion.

• Girls are considered less valuable in cultures with a strong preference for sons.

• Gender imbalances have had catastrophic consequences, including higher crime rates, more domestic violence, and societal instability.

The Details:

In societies where women and men have equal access to food, health care, and education, the sex ratio remains even and is sometimes tilted in favor of women. 

However, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the imbalance of sex ratios in some areas of Central Asia reaches 110 boys to every 100 girls. Even considering the natural male penchant for risk-taking and males’ shorter life expectancies, RFE/RL stated that such a discrepancy does not occur naturally. 

Sex-selective abortion is a familiar story in China and India, but women in Central Asia also often feel pressure from husbands, in-laws, and society to produce a son, something totally out of their control.

In Central Asian societies, women are often seen as “economically and socially less valuable” due to the burden of providing dowries, and their inability to carry on the family name.

Zoom In:

RFE/RL told the story of Guli, a 35-year-old Uzbek woman who underwent pressure from her husband to produce a boy with each pregnancy and pressure from her in-laws to abort when doctors told her that her fourth child would be another girl. She refused:

At first I thought my husband was joking […]. But my mother-in-law constantly repeated that it was my fault we kept having girls.’

She finally convinced her son to take a second wife, believing she would give him a long-awaited son. […].

But she also gave birth to four girls. Now my husband has a total of eight daughters.

Experts fear that such demographic gender imbalances will have security implications, including higher crime rates, more domestic violence, human trafficking, and societal instability as men look to start a family but cannot find wives. 

The United Nations (UN) estimates that 142 million girls are missing globally due to a cultural preference for male children. According to RFE/RL, the UN “has urged governments to ban technologies that are being used to help sex-selection by parents." But there is a contradiction in the UN’s approach.

The UN condemns “sex-selective practices [as] one of the most direct and blatant forms of sex-based violence and discrimination, beginning at the earliest stages of life.” The paradox is that the UN also states that “denial of access to abortion has been identified as a form of gender-based violence against women, which can amount to torture and/or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment.” 

The Bottom Line:

Ultimately, abortion harms both the baby and the mother and denies females in the womb their rights even before they have a chance to be born.

Sex-selective abortion is a major problem around the world. Babies should never be aborted because of their sex. Governments and organizations like the UN have the power to remind the world that human value and dignity are inherent to every person regardless of gender.