Baby girls

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231

An excerpt from the March 4, 2010 edition of The Economist (see link above):  "XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’


“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’


“‘But that’s...murder...and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now. The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.’”

I knew there was a one child per family law in parts of Asia, but I didn't fully consider the consequences of that rule.  I also knew that cultural values and societal pressures in Asia and other parts of the world make having a son more favorable.  But I never considered the horrifying actions that people are willing to take in order to have a son. 

From now on, when I see a sweet Asian girl in a non-Asian family, I will smile throughout my whole being. She made it.

I also have a new consciousness for the sad mothers, who after giving birth, are forced to give up their precious baby girl(s). Perhaps several times.  The lucky ones have the opportunity to give their daughters up for adoption.  Others watch while their daughters are strangled with the umbilical cord, or thrown into chamber pots.

What a tragically sad this world can be, and often more so for the females who live within it.  We are so fortunate to live where we do, when we do.

Someday I may need to adopt a daughter...