Abortion: Infant and China Essay

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Discuss selective abortion in light of cultural variations in definitions of moral community. How does the selective abortion of female infants in India and infants with birth defects in the United States affect the treatment of women and people with disabilities in these two cultures.

In North India and China, the birth of a female is often regarded as a great tragedy to a family. My parents did ultrasound or amniocentesis to test whether the child is male or female, they would like to do an abortion if the result is female. I'm originally from China, so I think I knew the situation in China clearly. It is an old tradition in China that only male can inherit the family property, so if the family wanted to be continued, they had to have at least one male in the family, or the property will be others. Because of this, since ancient times, the status of men was higher than women. Men could go to college and work, but women has to stay at home, take care of babies and do some houseworks. There is an old Chinese saying said that Mediocrity is the virtue of women. They think that the only job for women is to try their best to take care of the whole family, they are not required to have a lot of knowledges. And because this tradition lasts for a long time, so generally in China, men is more intelligent than women. With the development of medical industry, ultrasound and amniocentesis technology was invented. It can help parents to know the gender of their child before the child was born. This kind of technology leads an increase in the number of the selective abortion. Because a lot of parents do not want a girl and if they knew that the gender of the child is female, they would like to do the abortion and pregnant again to try to make a son. The clan of family is very important in China, and only the male can keep the last name of the family, so it means that if there are no sons in this family, the last name of the family will be changed to the girl's husband's. So most of families would like to have a son to make the family to be continued. But things become different nowadays in China, the thinking of people is open with the progress of the society. So the birth of female can be accepted by most of families. And also there was a law made in China to prevent abortion. The hospital can only use the technology to check the physical condition of infants and they can not tell the gender of the child to their parents, it is not allowed to do it anymore. We can see the change of situation by learning the data over 20 years. The proportion of men and women in 1992 is 120:100, but in 2012, the proportion is 116:100. It means that the selective abortion is controlled in effect in China. Although most of parents can accept the birth of female, there are still a lot of abandoned babies in China, and the majority of them are female. It indicates that there are still some parents in China do not want a daughter in their family, I believe that it needs time to fix this issue, people will absolutely become more and more open to have a female in their family after several years. In United States, ultrasound or amniocentesis is used for checking the physical condition of the infant, and if there has any diseases for the baby, parents may consider to do an abortion. There are advantages and disadvantages for using such kind of