The United Nations estimates that there are 200 million “missing” women in the world today, and by “missing,” the UN means they are dead. With the advent of abortion on demand, the modern world has encouraged parents around the world to use violence against their own children in order to achieve what they want. In some nations, even if the mother disagrees, the government takes the liberty of killing her children for her. While abortion proponents argue that abortion is an issue of women’s rights and empowerment, in reality it is nothing less than the deadliest weapon of gender discrimination on a global level.

Many blame the mass sex-selective abortions on specific policies and “backwards” traditions within specific nations and cultures. However, American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt found that the growing number of “missing” women couldn’t be explained by specific cultures or government policies alone. To measure the effect of sex-selective abortions, Eberstadt examined the sex ratio at birth for each nation. Naturally, the sex ratio at birth should fall between 103 to 106 boys for every 100 girls, and child sex ratios are correlated positively with education, income and urbanization. In large portions of China and India, the sex ratio is higher than 120 and increasing as the nations continue to develop and globalize, but the problem isn’t unique to the two Asian giants. Other nations with biologically impossible sex ratios include Austria, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Turkey among many others. In total, half of the world’s population lives in countries with unnaturally high sex ratios, representing nearly every one of the world’s major cultures and religions, from Buddhism to Christianity. The “missing” girl phenomenon is not a region-specific problem or statistical fluke. It is a global war on girls, driven by abortion on demand.

Unfortunately for women around the world, the progressive movement remains willing to tolerate gendercide as the collateral damage of their promotion of abortion. In response to the global war against girls, Human Rights Watch wrote, “regulating abortion may be ok but not to avoid sex-selection.” Planned Parenthood has opposed legislation aimed at limiting sex- and race-selective abortions. Liberal publication The American Prospect stated that no one should seek to stop parents from routinely aborting their female children, defending their claim with the assertion that “sometimes, freedom means we have to live with the possibility of icky things.” Genocide is not something that one lives with as a free person; it is a direct attack on freedom and, more importantly, humanity

If this remains the stance of the progressive movement, then it remains a movement committed to the defense of gendercide and the destruction of freedom. Liberals cannot attempt to empower women if they believe that baby girls are property to be kept or disposed of as parents or governments see fit. If the aborted infants were merely a few insignificant cells, then there wouldn’t be any missing women (and men) in the world today, but reality shows otherwise. The sex ratio at birth statistics demonstrate clearly that more women should be alive today but aren’t. They were sentenced to death because they were unwanted, and to permit abortions just because a child is unwanted or unintended is to permit Social Darwinism on an entirely new level. As some pro-abortion activists have argued, an unintended pregnancy is like a robber entering a home through an open window. However, unlike a robber entering a home, the infant in the womb does not have a strict moral duty not to enter the womb; to the contrary, the womb is her home, although she had no say in the matter. She and her mother are both equal persons in whom the value of life is to be respected and realized. Any direct action with the intention of ending either life is an affront to basic goodness and flagrant violation of their rights as human persons.

The final exhibit within the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington contrasts the brave few who fought the genocide promoted by the Nazi regime with the millions of Europeans who stood by and did nothing. The implication is clear: we as human beings have a moral obligation to respect and protect the life and dignity of all of our fellow human beings. For this reason, Harvard Right to Life is joining thousands of others at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. today. They are fighting on the front line of the global war against girls, to ensure that millions of girls and boys never go “missing” again. When millions of babies are murdered and the very existence of the female sex becomes conditional, all other issues in American politics pale in comparison. On the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade which we marked yesterday, the battle lines between life and death couldn’t be clearer.

Derek J. Bekebrede ’13 is an economics concentrator in Winthrop House and the President of the Harvard Republican Club.

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