February 11, 2007 to February 12, 2007
Sex Selection
Is Sex Selection of Births Undesirable? BECKER
In China in 2005, 118 boys were born for every 100 girls born. This ratio is far above the normal biological ratio of about 106 boys to 100 girls. The sexual disparity in China has resulted from a combination of low birth rates, a preference in China for boys when parents only have one or two children, and the spread of ultrasound techniques in that country that allow the sex of fetuses to be identified and then aborted if parents do not like the sex. Similar trends have emerged in India and South Korea as well.
More sophisticated and expensive methods permit parents to raise their chances of a male baby even before a woman becomes pregnant. Considered most reliable is a method that involves in vitro fertilization, drugs to stimulate the mother's ovaries, surgery, and other steps. The total cost can exceed $20,000, so this method clearly is only available to richer persons.
Are there good reasons to object to sex selection, either by abortion or more sophisticated methods? On Feb. 1 the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (the ACOG) did issue an opinion objecting on the grounds that it is unethical for physicians to participate in sex selection by parents that was based not on potential for sex-linked genetic disorders, but solely on family balancing of personal preferences. This opinion about the ethics of sexual selection applied "regardless of the timing of the selection (i.e., preconception or post conception) or the stage of development of the embryo or fetus".
Such an opinion seems strange in light of the general support by physicians and the Supreme Court of abortions by parents "solely" to satisfy their personal preferences about timing or number of children. What is so different about sex-selected abortions that would lead the ACOG with its over 51,000 members who provide health care to women to oppose abortions to satisfy parental desires for additional boys or girls while supporting the general right to abortion? The ACOG tries to provide an answer by claiming that sex selection through any method may "ultimately support sexist practices."
It is not clear what the ACOG means by sexist practices, but all the evidence on sexual preferences in the United States and other richer countries indicates an overwhelming desire for variety-boys and girls- rather than a strong preference for either sex. So sex-selected abortions in these countries is unlikely to have much of an effect on the overall sex ratio, although it would affect the distribution of boys and girls in different families.
I concentrate my remaining discussion on the implications of sex-selected abortions in countries where it raises the number of boys relative to girls. China, South Korea, and other countries have tried to implement control over sex selection by making it illegal to use ultrasound techniques to select the sex of children. However, these regulations are notoriously difficult to implement since doctors may say "congratulations" when an ultrasound test reveals a boy, and remain silent when the fetus is a girl.
Abortions of girl fetuses would reduce average family size if parents who prefer boys would end up with larger families than they would like because they cannot control the sex of their offspring. The effect on family size could go the other way, however, if the fear of having girls discourages parents from having additional children. These effects on family size could be important, but I ignore them in the following discussion and concentrate on the effects of a lower number of girl babies relative to boys compared to the biological natural girl-boy ratio of a little below 50-50.
One might expect parents who abort fetuses of sexes they do not want to treat their children better than they would otherwise since they now are satisfied with the sexes of their children. In such cases, sex-selected abortions against girls would improve rather than worsen the average treatment of girls since parents would be happier with the girls they have than if they had girls who were not really wanted. It is no surprise, for example, that orphanages in China predominantly have girls (and some handicapped boys), given the preference for boys in the traditional Chinese culture.
What about the overall effects in a society of skewing the sex ratio of births toward boys? The fewer girls who are born presumably would be better off since they would be better educated, and in other ways better treated by parents who want them. This would be reinforced if the effect of sex selected abortions is to lower the overall birth rate since it is well established that families with fewer children invest more in each one, girls as well as boys.
As children become adults in cohorts with a high ratio of boys, the advantage of girls and women increases since they are scarcer. It is claimed that young women in China are already at a premium as potential mates because strong sex-selection has been going on ever since the one child policy was introduced in the early 1980's. Prior to the spread of ultrasound techniques, sex selection occurred through sending girls to orphanages, neglect, and in some case even engaging in female infanticide.
To be sure, if the value of girls as wives and girlfriends, and in other ways, rises because they are scarcer, then the value of boys as husbands and boyfriends tends to fall. However, it is not apparent why that should call for policies that prevent sex-selected techniques, unless the interests of men were motivating these policies. To use an analogy, a shift of demand in an economy toward services and away from manufacturing because of a shift in "preferences" toward services- as has occurred in the United States and other rich countries- benefits women relative to men since women are more likely to work in services than are men. Yet no one would claim that society should prevent such preferences because they help (indirectly) one sex over another.
The great statistician and biologist, R. A. Fisher, used a celebrated biological analysis to explain why the sex ratio remains close to 50-50 in non-human species. An economic analysis based on incentives gives results that are related to Fisher's result. An improvement in the position of women due to a decline in the number of girls relative to boys leads to some correction in the sex ratio as parental choices respond in the long run to the more favorable position of girls. If women are in greater demand as wives and in the economy when they are in scarcer supply, some parents will decide that having girls has advantages, possibly through receiving generous bride prices when daughters marry. This would shift "preferences" toward having girls. The long run outcome would not necessarily be the biological natural ratio of a little more boy births than girl births, but it should be closer to that ratio than the current ratios in some Asian countries.
Sex Selection--Posner's Comment
I have little to add to Becker's convincing discussion. One small point worth noting, however, is a new technology for sex selection, described in an interesting article by Denise Grady in the February 6 New York Times. It is called "sperm sorting" and enables male or female sperm to be concentrated in semen, greatly shifting the odds in favor of producing a child of one sex rather than the other. The cost is only $4,000 to $6,000, which is much less than in vitro fertilization, since the "enriched" sperm can simply be inseminated in the woman rather than requiring in vitro fertilization. Sex selection by sperm sorting may actually be cheaper than ultrasound plus abortion, the conventional method; if so, and it comes to dominate, the ethics of sex selection will be separable from the ethics of abortion motivated by sex selection.
The key points that Becker makes, both of which I agree with, are, first, that sex selection by U.S. couples is unlikely to result in an unbalanced sex ratio; and, second, that in countries such as China and India in which there is a strong preference for male offspring, girls will be treated better if sex selection is permitted, since there will be fewer girls born to couples who did not want them. Of course, as there will fewer girls, period, the net effect on total female utility is unclear: fewer reduces total utility but happier increases it. Since the net effect is uncertain, feminist opponents of sex selection should consider whether, if unwanted girls are born, there are feasible techniques for improving their treatment so that if sex selection is forbidden (assuming that that is feasible--Becker suggests that it is not), there can be reasonable confidence that net female utility will increase rather than decrease.
I also agree with Becker that there is a tendency to self-selection, since as the percentage of girls and women declines, men's demand for them rises, and observing this couples will tend to shift their reproductive selection in favor of girls. Since there is no reason why this tendency must overcome a preference for boys, an unbalanced sex ratio could persist indefinitely. But this is unlikely in rapidly developing countries such as China and India. A strong preference for male children tends to be found in societies in which there is a great deal of subsistence agriculture, a weak social insurance system, and a reliance on private violence (as in a revenge culture) to protect personal and property rights; all these factors increase the demand for male children. As these conditions (the first two of which are important in China and India, and all three of which are important in Iraq, for example) change, the preference diminishes, as we observe in the wealthy societies of Europe and North America, where there is no longer a net preference for having male rather than female children.
Apparently sex selection is actually more common in urban areas than in rural areas of India. But presumably the reason is that access to ultrasound for detecting the sex of a fetus, and to abortion, is greater in cities, and this effect could dominate the greater preference for sex selection in rural areas. Urban Indians might prefer boys because of a lag in the adaptation of traditional values to urban conditions.
The transition to a 50-50 sex ratio, even if inevitable, is likely to take a long time. Suppose at time 1 there is a large excess of male births, followed at time 2 by a dawning recognition that girls are more valuable than had been realized at time 1. Probably time 1 and time 2 will be separated by 20 or 30 years (or more, if there is a "values lag," as I suggested earlier), and so there will be at least one entire adult generation in which the sex ratio is skewed in favor of males. Should countries that face this imbalance worry about it to the extent of taking measures against it? We have a natural experiment, which can help us to answer the question, in societies that permit polygamy. The effect of polygamy (technically polygyny--multiple wives--but polyandry is virtually unknown) is to raise the effective ratio of men to women, since a number of women are removed from the pool available to the nonpolygamous men. In a society in which there are 100 men and 100 women, but 10 of the women are married to one of the men, the male-female sex ratio, so far as the rest of the society is concerned, is 99 to 90. The result is to raise the average age of marriage for men and reduce it for women, reduce the percentage of married men and increase the percentage of married women, reduce promiscuity by increasing women's bargaining power, and possibly increase male emigration and female immigration. None of these effects seem likely to harm society seriously as a whole.
In contrast, research that I discuss in my book Sex and Reason (1992) finds that the low effective male-female sex ratio of the black population in the United States (due largely to abnormally high rates of imprisonment and homicide of young black males) promotes promiscuity because there is more competition among women for men, and reduces the marriage rate and family formation.
In sum, sex selection, at least in favor of males, appears not to have negative external effects. It presumably confers net private benefits (like other preference satisfaction), or otherwise it would not be practiced. (There are no external effects in societies, such as that of the United States, in which sex selection is unbiased.) The case for forbidding it is therefore unconvincing (at least when sex selection is not implemented by abortion, to which there are independent objections) unless it can be shown to create a net decrease in female welfare.