On 14/07/2006, at 2:58 PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
It's not as expensive _now_ as the cost of raising a child. So,
increasingly more people will do this - to the point that it
becomes so cheap that everybody will do it.
Even if that's true, however, i still can't see it seriously skewing
the sex ratio *in the long run*. China is by no means a permanent
situation, degrading and disgraceful as it (and many other places...)
is at the moment. Cultural expectations can change dramatically in a
generation or two, and if sons are going to fail to continue the
family line because they're unable to find wives, at least some
families will take the pragmatic approach to have daughters...
Here's a review paper, summarising the current thinking and state of
research on sex ratios and gender selection.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jons/sexratio.html
To be honest, I'd rather see PGD than late-term abortions for gender
selection, and I'd definitely rather see PGD than infanticide. I
think it's hard to argue that an undifferentiated blastocyst has
"rights", given the huge natural wastage of pre-implantation embryos,
so better that parents make some choice getting the baby they want,
than going for luck and resenting the outcome.
Charlie
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