By Terry Vanderheyden
UNITED NATIONS, November 22, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new report has revealed that globally there are at least 200 million more males than females – because of what one researcher has termed “gendercide”– the extermination of girls in utero and out.
Lead researcher Theodor Winkler, announcing his findings Thursday at the United Nations, said that infanticide and gender-specific abortion were the leading causes for the dearth of girls.
“We are confronted with the slaughter of Eve, a systematic gendercide of tragic proportions,” Winkler stated in the preface to his recently published book on the subject, “Women in an Insecure World,” as reported by Reuters news.
“There are dozens of ways women come to a grisly end,” Winkler said. “Obviously, human rights and the legal protection of women is of crucial importance but it is only one component. There is also a cultural change that must operate.”
“It starts in the womb,” he emphasized. “There are societies where male births are preferred, particularly if the number of births are limited. That’s where abortion for gender reasons starts.”
The research also investigated violence against women, claiming that annually, 700,000 women are sold into prostitution, and “at least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.”
“The deeply rooted phenomenon of the violence against women is one of the great crimes of humanity,” Winkler said. “We cannot close our eyes to it and hope it simply goes away.”
In China, where there is a cultural preference for male children, the one-child policy implemented in 1979 has led to the selective murder of millions of Chinese girls within the womb. This selective infanticide has contributed to a male-female gender gap of almost 17 percent; in some provinces, this gap is as high as 30 percent according to official census data for the year 2000.
Having officially been a “great success, preventing at least 250 million births since 1980,” China’s horrendous one-child policy involving forced abortion and economic penalties for those who contravene the law was made permanent in 2000. China’s Communist People’s Daily news reported: “We cannot just be content with the current success, we must make population control a permanent policy.”
China is not the only country selectively targeting girls for death: the Indian Medical Association said in 2002 that up to two million baby girls are aborted every year there due to a cultural preference for sons.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
India’s Top Court Bans Sex-Selection Abortion Advertising
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/oct/02100906.html
China’s One-Child Policy Leading to One-Sex Population
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/dec/03120509.html
China Reinforces One-Child Policy
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/sep/00092605.html
China Admits its Girl Shortage Caused by One Child Policy is a “Major Threat”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/may/04051107.html
China’s Female Shortage Due To Abortion Of Girls
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/may/02051307.html