Handbook of Clinical Gender Medicine. Группа авторов
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Название: Handbook of Clinical Gender Medicine

Автор: Группа авторов

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Зарубежная психология

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isbn: 9783805599306

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СКАЧАТЬ and involuntarily childless men begs the question of old-age support for that rising cohort. Some economists have hypothesized that mass feticide, in making women scarce, will only increase their ‘value’ [40] - but in settings where the legal and personal rights of the individual are not secure and inviolable, the ‘rising value of women’ can have perverse and unexpected consequences, including increased demand for prostitution and an upsurge in the kidnapping and trafficking of women. This phenomenon is now reportedly being witnessed in some women-scarce areas in Asia [41].

      Finally, there is the speculative question of the social impact of a sudden addition of a large cohort of young ‘excess males’ to populations sustaining extreme SRBs: depending on a given country’s cultural and institutional capabilities for coping with this challenge, such trends could quite conceivably lead to increased crime, violence, and social tensions - or possibly even a greater proclivity for social instability.7

      All in all, mass sex selection can be regarded as a ‘tragedy of the commons’ dynamic, in which the aggregation of individual (parental) choices has the inadvertent result of degrading the quality of life for all - and some much more than others.

      What are the prospects for mass sex-selective feticide in the years immediately ahead? Unfortunately, there is ample room for cautious pessimism. Although biologically unnatural SRBs now characterize an expanse accounting for something approaching half of humanity, it is by no means clear that this march has yet ceased.

      Considerations Moving Forward

      Acknowledgement

      The author would like to thank Mr. Dale Swartz and Ms. Kelly Matush for overall research assistance for this chapter, and Ms. Heesu Kim and Mr. Mark Seraydarian for identifying those DHS surveys in which parental gender preferences for the next birth are specified. Ms. Laura Kelly of Battelle provided extremely constructive criticism of an earlier draft. All remaining errors are the author’s responsibility.

      Footnotes:

      4 According to Vietnam’s Ministry of Health, annual ultrasound tests nationwide rose more than tenfold between 1997 and 2007, i.e. from 1 million to 10.8 million; these data refer to medical imaging for all purposes, not only obstetrics [28].