A Cautionary Tale

There once was a society that considered children of a particular sort, who could be born into any family, to have very little value. Parents rejoiced upon discovering that a child was not one of them. When medical technology became advanced enough to identify these children in the womb, many parents chose to abort them and to try again for a different sort of child. Other parents gave these children away, allowing them to be adopted by foreigners who did not have the same cultural prejudices. In a few tragic cases, these children became victims of infanticide.

By now, some readers may have guessed that I am not just telling a creative story but describing the actual situation of girls in China. The ratio of male births to female births in China is now about 120 to 100, and the practice of sex-selective abortion is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, despite governmental efforts to prevent it. This sad tale illustrates what happens when widespread prejudice meets modern prenatal technology.

I have to wonder what might happen if a recent proposal in the UK for in-vitro selection of female embryos, which is intended to reduce the likelihood of giving birth to an autistic child because more boys than girls are identified as autistic, were to became a common practice in Western countries. (In the United States, it is already being done at some clinics.) Maybe in about 25 years, lonely Chinese bachelors might be making arrangements to bring mail-order autistic brides from the West. If our society's attitude toward the autistic minority population has not improved by then, I expect such brides would consider themselves lucky to have the chance to emigrate and get away from the prejudiced country where they grew up.