Study Finds 23 Million Females are Missing Due to Sex-Selective Abortion
By Stefano Gennarini, J.D, C-Fam:
Sex-selective abortion has caused the premature death of over 23 million females, according to the first-ever systematic global study of sex ratio imbalance.
Demographers have noted the phenomenon of skewed sex ratios for decades. Millions of females are missing because of sex-selective abortion. This has led to increased trafficking in children and women. It has also led to increased rates of suicide, depression, and substance abuse among unmarried men. But the global scale of the phenomenon and how many girls exactly have been aborted has relied on uncertain estimates.
Now, for the first time, demographers have undertaken to study the phenomenon of skewed sex ratios due to sex-selective abortion systematically across the globe in a study published in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences with funding from the University of Singapore.
The natural sex ratio around the globe, with few variations due to genetics and geography, is around 1.05, or about 100 women to every 105 men. But the sex ratio at birth in many countries is in some cases dramatically skewed.
It is difficult to estimate the global impact of sex-selective abortion because abortions, and sometimes even births, are not always accurately tracked. The new study devised a statistical model for predicting the total impact of sex-selective abortion in countries that have a skewed sex ratio.
The authors found 23 million baby girls are missing globally as a “direct consequence of sex-selective abortion, driven by the coexistence of son preference, readily available technology of prenatal sex determination, and fertility decline.”
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