01-07 Abortion - John Bulloch

The one-child policy in China was an attempt to curb its growing population. The result has been sex-selection abortion and a shortage of 30 million women. It is a similar story in India. We can assume something like 15-20 million abortions a year are performed in each of these two nations.

It was 1985, and a tour of China. The two guides, one spoke Mandarin and the other Cantonese, had both been educated in the US.
Everyone wanted to know more about China’s one child policy. The conversations got hot and heavy after visiting a nursery where working mothers had their children looked after during the day. To our surprise all the children shown to us were girls.
It was an attempt to deal with all the public criticism of a policy that led to sex selection abortion.
Today, it is not an exaggeration to estimate the girls aborted in India and China since ultrasound technology made it possible to determine the sex of a fetus is in the order of 100 million.
Public records would indicate 15-20 million abortions a year in both India and China.
What is so interesting about the public debate associated with population issues and abortion is the difficulty in reconciling what is illegal and the number of abortions reported. Totally illegal in some nations and allowed under certain circumstances in other nations. But a market, legal or illegal, everywhere for abortions linked to unwanted pregnancies.
There is not an issue anywhere that is more difficult to handle politically than abortion. There are religious considerations. Medical complications. And how about the philosophical question about when life begins.
In Canada, I adopted two children in the 1960s, when abortion was illegal. The birth mothers were 16 and 40. Not easy for them to carry their babies, but wonderful for my wife and myself.
Puzzling over the issue of right and wrong, I believe all we can really do is trust mothers, and make abortion legal with reasonable restrictions.
For most of the developing world the major preoccupation is under population and all that implies for supporting an aging society. No one today talks about abortion as a tool for controlling the population.
Then there is Russia, with one of the highest abortion rates in the world. Something like 54 women out of every 1000 women of child bearing age have an abortion. Not sure I would want to bring children into the world in a nation with the economy and culture of Russia.
A comparable number for the US is 21 and for Canada 15. Then there is Japan where it is illegal. Their abortion rate is 12.