Boy or Girl?

When you sit back and think about life and I mean really think about life, there doesn't seem to be much else that would top its grandeur! I invite you to think about it as well, especially the blessing - and responsibility - of women to be guardians of life, to shelter life and have life grow in their womb, skipping the actual process of giving birth, of course. I hear it's not a pleasant experience!

What got me thinking about this? Well, I get my share of "thinking time" here however I mostly get lost in my thoughts while sitting on the bus, looking out the window. On my way home today, I was looking at two girlie girls (I mean, very girlie maybe 6 years old girls) as they held hands and skipped about laughing ahead of their mothers. Seeing their lovely laced socks with ribbons worn in highly polished black shoes made me think about none other than gender preferences.

Since I moved to South Korea, I met my share of expecting mothers at school. Of course, my first questions were always "Is it a boy or a girl?" or "Are you going for the 'big surprise'?" which I simply stopped asking after numerous women told me they did not know.

South Korea passed a law in 1987 preventing medical staff from revealing a baby's gender to his/her family members. This ruling was passed as an attempt to reduce the high rate of gender selection abortions, therefore protecting unborn children. Culturally, boys were the preferred gender, leaving baby girls to be aborted at terrifying rates.

Recently, the Korean government claimed this last was no longer valid and lifted the ban just this past summer. I dug some more and found a staggering number of people, especially those associated with religious groups, against the lifting of the ban saying that too many people still favored boys over girls. One report stated that when a family's third child was involved, there were 121.8 boy births compared to 100 girl births! Now, abortions are illegal in South Korea but that doesn't mean they are not being openly performed.

I kept reading and searching. The more I dug into this issue, the more I discovered the depressing statistics and stories of many countries. I'm not talking solely about South Korea, but mostly the data I found regarding China and India, countries with a gender genocide going on in this day and age. In India for instance, UNICEF reported there were about 50 million more males than females today, a 25 million increase since 1990. So what do they plan to do once they deplete their land of women? Mimic the recent phenomenon of the shark living in a tank and have asexual births of baby boys? Seriously.

I think I shall stop this "digging" and read about fairies and unicorns instead. This last would be much more comforting than the truth. No, I shall not. In my opinion, this is why evil seems to succeed at times; because many good people, myself included, would rather look the other way and conclude it's not their problem. So what can I do? What can you do?

We can pray!