Each year it is estimated that more than 100 million girls disappear around the world. These girls are often deserted, mutilated, drowned and tossed to the side like trash, according to the Population Research Insititue.
The underlying reason is because they were born female and not the preferred gender – male.
International Speaker Steve Mosher will visit Sinclair Community College on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 3:30 p.m. in Building 8. Mosher will give a presentation titled, “The Myth of Overpopulation.” He will highlight the asserted abuses of human rights violations because of population control.
The event is free and open to the public.
In 1978, China developed its one-child policy, which restricts married couples and urban families to having one child. In rural areas, if the first-born is a girl, the family can try a second time to have a boy. If the first-born is a boy, the family is required to stop at one child. But still a third child is strictly forbidden, according to Mosher.
“In some of these countries the government says you can’t have any more children, Bonnie Borel-Donohue, president of the Traditional Values Club said. “The idea that a government can dictate how many children a couple has is frightening, and it is wrong. That right belongs to individual couples.”
Mosher has testified before Congress as to the negative impact sex-selective abortions have had on China. As one of the first social scientists selected to do fieldwork in China, he has witnessed women suffer from forced abortions and sterilizations.
He said he decided it was time to speak out.
“I would like people to understand what life is like under a government that controls all reproduction, that dictates how many children are to be born each under a state plan, that in effect has seized control of all the reproductive systems of the country and is using them for its purposes,” Mosher said.
It is estimated that 40 countries around the world have adopted the one-child policy. Mosher said that the myth of overpopulation causes some to believe that people are a burden on their country or on the environment.
An unintended consequence of the one-child policy is what Borel-Donohue calls the King Tut syndrome.
“That one child a couple is allowed to have gets spoiled rotten, which is not healthy for children,” Borel-Donohue said. “We are all created equal. Government bureaucrats are not superior to us. We all have the right to plan our own families. People should get and keep the government, not the church, out of their bedrooms.”
China is now experiencing a skewed proportion of men to women, young men can’t find brides and women are trafficked across borders to meet this demand, according to Mosher.
“The one-child policy is quite simply the worst human rights abuse occurring in the world today,” Mosher said. “What could be worse than the forced abortion of a woman who is nine months pregnant, or the killing of a full term healthy infant? Such crimes are common in China. Human rights abuses in one country diminish us all, and we must speak out against them.”