lingua franca 這個部落格已經寫了快十二年了，現在一共累積了近八百篇文章。這是教練當年上傳的第一篇文章，重讀舊文心中超激動的。

這篇文章上傳的時間為2011年7月18日，也是部落格第一篇非NPR廣播的文章。部落格啟動的日期應該是2011年的五月。

TIME Magazine

Monday, Jul. 04, 2011

It's a Boy

By Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Largely as a result of sex-selective abortions選擇性別墮胎, Asia today is short of 160 million women. They have disappeared silently over several decades, but their absence can be seen in classrooms filled with boys, in huddles of 一推 bachelors on city streets and in higher rates of bride trafficking新娘販售 and prostitution elicited by召妓 growing numbers of sexually frustrated men.性需求不能得到滿足的男人

Researchers often speak of Asia's missing women as a consequence of a traditional favoring of sons. Beijing-based science journalist Mara Hvistendahl acknowledges this in her groundbreaking開創性的 new book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, but argues that the imbalance is "an outgrowth of economic progress, not backward traditions."

Countries like India and China, viewing smaller populations as a path to economic development以控制人口的方式促進經濟發展, encourage (or enforce) lower birthrates — and couples having fewer children will, in many cases, do anything to ensure that those children are boys. "Anything" means sex-selective abortion on a massive scale大規模, aided by medical technology that can detect fetal胚胎 sex at 20 weeks' gestation. Wealthy urbanites都市人 with easy access to health care — and a consumer's sense of entitlement 消費者自認應有的權利— lead the demand. They want sons, and they'll get them, skewing歪斜了the sex ratio from a natural 105 boys for every 100 girls at birth to 112 in India and 121 in China.

How did abortion become such a pervasive practice普遍的作法 in Asia? Hvistendahl's harshest critiques嚴格的評論 fall on Cold War — era Western population-control activists聯合國的人口控制激進主義者 working for organizations like the U.N. Population Fund聯合國人口基金會. They viewed abortion, she contends聲稱 爭論, as a means of一種方式 birth control in the developing world. Fearful that countries with large populations would suffer economic instability經濟穩定 and fall prey to成為受害者 communism, U.S. officials in particular pressured Asian governments into liberalizing abortion laws墮胎法自由化 放寬墮胎相關法令. States adopted population-control targets in return for aid, and birthrates fell, but women who had undergone abortion in the name of 以…的名義population control soon found another use for the procedure. Combined with quick ultrasound checks超音波檢查 for fetal sex, abortion could do away with殺掉 廢除 unwanted girls. "What then?" Hvistendahl asks. If couples choose boys, "what will be the effect on our society?" Her answers are unsettling令人感到不安.

Many men, unable to find wives, seek sex and companionship in brothels; others pay traffickers人口販子 for abducted brides. In recent years, thousands of women from Vietnam have been smuggled into偷渡 China to work as prostitutes妓女 or be sold into marriage以買賣方式成婚. Vietnam also provides a source of mail-order brides郵購新娘 for bachelors in Taiwan and South Korea. And in India, Hvistendahl notes, high murder rates aren't found in the poorest regions but in those with the biggest sex-ratio imbalance性別比例的失衡.

Hvistendahl ominously不祥的 notes that women will soon begin disappearing from other regions as the global middle class expands. Already, demographers人口學家 see imbalances in Albania and the Caucasus. New technology has even made sex selection性別選擇 possible before pregnancy, enabling couples undergoing in vitro fertilization試管嬰兒 to select sex while checking for genetic conditions. "In China and California alike, mothers have become their own eugenicists優生學家," says Hvistendahl.

Ultimately, the totality全部 總計 of these private decisions has created the problem. Like "the owner of a single-occupancy SUV單人休旅車主 who convinces himself his environmental impact isn't really that bad," Hvistendahl writes, couples choosing boys often assume假設 that others will have girls and that somehow a balance will be achieved. But today, as her alarming book reveals, nature can too easily be made unnatural.