The eCrozier

Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, discovered through her research a widening gap in the ratio between boys and girls in East and South Asia. It seems greater access to technology has allowed parents in that part of the world to abort daughters in the womb and keep sons. In those cultures, boys are more highly valued than girls. Over time, this has made it more difficult for men to find wives. Hvistendahl estimates there are 160 million missing women in East and South Asia due to this practice over the years.

This has led to social unrest in many places. The crime rate has also increased in those areas with skewed male-to-female sex ratio, since unmarried men, the data shows, are responsible for more violent crime than married men. Similar sex selection is also happening to a lesser extent in the U.S. due to the growing popularity of in vitro fertilization, which allows parents to choose their child’s sex. Hvistendahl sees a “shift toward consumer eugenics” where parents try to determine prenatally how their child is going to turn out. Those parental choices are now having grave and growing unintended consequences for the world.

This is yet another example of how a greater capacity to have more choices available to us does not necessarily improve our lives or the world. In fact, such choice can have serious unintended consequences as we see in East and South Asia. To be flip, my life is not any better because there are fifty different breakfast cereals from which to choose in the grocery aisle rather than only three. But that vast choice gives me the illusion of greater power and control over my life. The illusion tells me I am the master of all I survey because I have the power to choose from all these cereal options.

There is a powerful scene in the magnificent film, “The Hurt Locker”, where an Iraqi War veteran returns home and accompanies his wife and baby to the grocery store. His wife asks him to go to the cereal aisle to choose a box. He gets there, stares at the choices, and freezes. Not a word is spoken. The camera slowly draws back as he is paralyzed by the choices. Soon he re-enlists in the army to go back to the war because the choices there are so simple and binary: life or death.

I have two sons and a daughter. My daughter (the youngest) graduates from High School tomorrow. I cannot fathom the cultural pressure found elsewhere (and to some extent, here) that would lead parents to abort a child, especially if the rationale is for sex selection. My daughter amazes and astounds me (and yes, occasionally confounds me as well). I want her to have the freedom to choose her way in life. But as she will discover (hopefully sooner rather than later), freedom of choice is culturally conditioned and such choice, while important to human rights, is also a double-edged sword often with unintended consequences. And freedom of choice is not to be confused with the freedom described by St Paul. Christian freedom, as described by St Paul, is the freedom to choose to follow Jesus, come what may, cost what it will. It is the freedom to choose to be a servant; to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.

+Scott