On Sunday, June 26, CNN aired a report about “Nepal’s Stolen Children.” The documentary, narrated by actress Demi Moore, explained how Nepalese girls are sold into slavery and turned into prostitutes in neighboring India. I’m sorry I missed it. But Chuck Colson, a gentleman who shares my worldview, did not.
Colson, in his Breakpoint commentary of July 8, noted that Moore became emotional during the broadcast. Understandably so. Slavery and bondage as a prostitute should never happen. But the problem, Colson believes, is that we are ignoring the driving force of this “inhumane traffic in innocence.”
The New York Times ran an article following the CNN documentary titled “160 Million and Counting.” It referred to the number of “missing” women in the world. Colson points out “missing” as in “disappeared,” rather, as in “never born in the first place.”
Ross Douthat, author of the Times article, reminded readers that 26 years ago the number of “missing” women was estimated by experts to be 100 million. These experts concluded, after examining skewed sex ratios in China and India, “that something terrible was happening.” Twenty year later, the estimate has grown by 60%. But those concerned about this terrible thing, Douthat notes, remain reluctant to name the cause: abortion.
Colson writes, “Citing the work of social scientist Mara Hvistendahl, Douthat points out an uncomfortable truth: what Times readers would no doubt see as ‘female empowerment’ lies behind the missing women. According to Hvistendahl, in places like India, ‘women use their increased autonomy’ to abort their daughters and ‘select for sons,’ who enhance their social status.”
Sex-selection abortion may have originated among the “affluent,” but now all women can select — or reject — their preborn child based on sexual preference.
What is the impact? Colson notes a 2008 article by two Loyola Law School professors who found that by “reducing the number of potential brides, selective abortion in India increased the demand for sex workers.” And, Colson continues, “one way that ‘demand’ is being filled is through the Nepalese girls featured in the CNN documentary. The ‘lucky’ ones are ‘smuggled and purchased from poor countries like Nepal and Bhutan to be brides for Indian men.’ The more unfortunate are sold into the Indian sex trade.”
India and China have outlawed the practice of sex-selection abortion because of the social ills and suffering. But the practice continues because, says Colson, “cultural norms are hard to overcome.”
Douthat notes that sex-selection abortion puts Western liberals “in a distinctly uncomfortable position.” Colson explains why. “They can’t deny the reality of the practice but, at the same time, their own worldview leaves them hanging in mid-air.”
“After all, they insist ‘that the unborn aren’t human beings yet, and that the right to an abortion is nearly absolute.’ ” But, continues Colson, “160 million missing women and the suffering it radiates in all directions tells you where that kind of thinking inevitably leads.”
Colson concludes, “It’s hard to imagine a better example of the poverty of modern thinking: faced with a great evil and unable to address the answer.”
Slavery and prostitution are great evils. But, the Christian worldview addresses the answer. When we value human life in the womb, we will better value and protect all human life. Including Nepalese girls.
__________
Breakpoint is published by Prison Fellowship ministries.
For further reading: “Gender Discrimination Fuels Sex Selective Abortions” (Lemoine & Tanagho, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, 2-23-08); “160 Million and Counting” (Douthat, New York Times, 6-26-11); “It’s Raining Men” (Kim Moreland, Breakpoint blog, 5-24-11)
Ezerwoman's Blog 
Sexual Menu?
Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, Parenting & Education, Relationships, tagged children, faithfulness, future of marriage, generations, harm, infidelity, Iowa, man, Mercatornet, monogamy, New York, parenting, same-sex marriage, sexual menu, social trends, suffering, woman on July 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I disagree. So does Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet. In his article of July 11, he asks: “Anything else on the menu?”
He offers three reasons why the legalization of same-sex “marriage” will, indeed, affect our culture. All come from authors featured in the New York Times. First, Michael Cook notes the commentary of Katherine M. Franke, a Columbia University law professor. She confessed that she really didn’t want to marry her long-time lesbian partner anyway. Why lose the flexibility and benefits of living as domestic partners? Cook quotes professor Franke, saying as far as she was concerned, “we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security.”
“One choice in a menu of legally supported relationships?” Cook asks. “How long is the menu?”
Cook offers a second reason why legalizing same-sex “marriage” will impact society by highlighting another article in the Times by Ralph Richard Banks. Banks is a professor at Stanford Law School. What comes after gay “marriage”? Banks “puts his money on polygamy and incest” because legal prohibitions on either practice are losing strength. Society forbade them in the past because they were seen as “morally reprehensible;” therefore, society felt “justified in discriminating against them.” I follow Banks’ reasoning. Just as homosexual advocates are working hard to shift our thinking and normalize the behavior God calls a sin, so will advocates of polygamy and incest.
Two more behaviors, Cook notes, are added to the “menu of [sexual] options.”
The third reason why legalized same-sex “marriage” will have a domino affect on the culture is voiced by Dan Savage. The Times describes Savage as “America’s leading sex-advice columnist.” He is syndicated in at least 50 newspapers. Here’s what Cook writes about Savage. “Savage, who claims to be both ‘culturally Catholic’ and gay, thinks that gay couples have a lot to teach heterosexual couples, especially about monogamy. Idealising monogamy destroys families, he contends. Men are simply not made to be monogamous. Until feminism came along, men had mistresses and visited prostitutes. But instead of extending the benefits of the sexual revolution to women, feminism imposed a chastity belt on men. ‘And it’s been a disaster for marriage,’ he says. What we need, in his opinion, is relationships which are open to the occasional fling — as long as partners are open about it.”
Cook continues, “Traditional marriage — well, actually real marriage — is and has always been monogamous and permanent. There have been and always will be failures. But that is the ideal to which couples aspire. They marry ‘for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part’. The expectation is exclusivity in a life-long commitment.”
Cook believes that legalization of same-sex “marriage” will most assuredly “affect the attitudes of young couples who are thinking of marriage a decade from now . . . it will be one of a number of options . . . they will have different expectations . . . marriage will include acceptance of infidelity, will not necessarily involve children, and will probably only last a few years.”
Advocates of same-sex “marriage” in New York say it’s good for marriage. Cook concludes:
“In a way, they’re right. Just as World War II was good for Germany because out of the ashes, corpses and rubble arose a heightened sense of human dignity and a democratic and peaceful government, same-sex marriage will heighten our esteem for real marriage. But in the meantime, the suffering will be great.”
Amen.
Mercatornet: Navigating modern complexities
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