Consider this: The ratio in India is 112 boys to 100 girls, 120 in Armenia, and 121 in China. According to Jonathan Last in his Wall Street Journal review of Mara Hvinstendahl’s book Unnatural Selection, “there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world.”

Scientific developments in the 1970s brought amniocentesis, or the in utero “sex test,” which has been replaced in recent years by the ultrasound. Costing an average of $12 in India or China, sex tests have become popular in preventing the birth of unwanted girls. The Wall Street Journal reports that an India clinic advertises, “Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later” in reference to the cost of a sex test versus a dowry. In The Economist’s in-depth March 4 article “Gendercide: The Worldwide War on Baby Girls,” it reported that “In one hospital in Punjab, in northern India, the only girls born after a round of ultrasound scans had been mistakenly identified as boys, or else had a male twin.”

Jonathan Last gives this compelling example:

Take South Korea. In 1989, the sex ratio for first births there was 104 boys for every 100 girls — perfectly normal. But couples who had a girl became increasingly desperate to acquire a boy. For second births, the male number climbed to 113; for third, to 185. Among fourth-born children, it was a mind-boggling 209.

Similar patterns can be found among Chinese, Indian and Korean parents in America.

Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider, has not distanced itself from using abortion as a form of birth control, but rather, embraced it (read more at the Live Action Blog). Discussing developing nations, Malcom Potts, a past medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, stated that abortion was preferable to birth control: “Early abortion is safe, effective, cheap and potentially the easiest method to administer.” A slight variation on gender-selective abortion, race-selective birth control is what motivated Margaret Sanger in part to found Planned Parenthood (BlackGenocide.org). True to its eugenic roots, even in recent years, Planned Parenthood has accepted donations earmarked for the abortion of black babies. Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood fought legislation that ultimately passed in Arizona which criminalized performing or coercing a woman into receiving an abortion on the basis of race or gender selection.

These results are the consequences of choice. As Jonathan Last concludes his article:

For if “choice” is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against “gendercide.” Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down Syndrome or because the mother’s “mental health” requires it. Choice is choice . . . this is where choice leads.  This is where choice has already led . . . there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it.

If statistics and history hold, this is where our society is headed if it continues its full embrace of “choice.” Advocates for abortion on demand must take a close look at the facts before it’s too late . . . another 163 million girls too late.