Around here and in the popular media there has been much discussion about gendercide — the “disappearance” of girls, mostly in Asia, due to abortion. The thing that started all this discussion is Mara Hvistendahl’s book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. I reviewed it in the August issue and it had to be a brief service review rather than an in-depth engagement of Hvistendahl’s arguments and evidence. The review concludes by noting what others (Jonathan V. Last, Mark Steyn, Ross Douthat) have said about the book and phenomenon of gendercide. I highly recommend Unnatural Selection for whatever the weaknesses which I briefly mention in the review, the book is full of anecdotes that illustrate the terrifying consequences of choice when applied to the decision to rid the world of women including blatant infanticide and human trafficking.
