China: Sex-Selective Abortion Remains Rampant for Third Children – 133 Boys for Every 100 Girls Born: Report
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China released a startling statistic in its annual report: “Data published this past year showed on average, boy-preference for couples having a third child, with 133 boys born for every 100 girls, across China.” 2024 CECC Report, pp 155. See also pp. 160 and 166.
Such a vast gender imbalance cannot be achieved naturally. It can only be achieved through the sex-selective abortion of baby girls – through gendercide.
The report does not provide a statistic on how many third children are born in China each year. It is, therefore, not possible to determine how many female third children were selectively aborted because of their gender. The report does, however, state that in 2023, there were an estimated 30 million more males living in China than females. This gender imbalance in turn is a powerful, driving force behind human trafficking and sexual slavery, in China and the surrounding countries.
The confluence of four factors has resulted in the selective abortion of 30 million baby girls: son-preference; coercive low birth limits (under the one, two and three-child policies); the availability of ultrasound to determine the sex of a fetus; and easy access to abortion.
March 8 marks International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls." However, gendercide – the most violent form of gender discrimination – is not mentioned as a violation of the rights of the baby girls who are selectively aborted just because they are girls. Nor is it mentioned as an injustice, or as an action item to save girls.
As early as 1990, a Nobel Prize winning economist estimated that there were 100 million women missing in the world at that time. More recent estimates rise to 160 million, or as high as 200 million – a figure that rivals all the casualties of all the wars of the blood-soaked 20th century. Truly, gendercide is the real war on women.
The Beijing Declaration of 1995, adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women, contains the following language:
- [Paragraph] 115. Acts of violence against women also include forced sterilization and forced abortion, coercive/forced use of contraceptives, female infanticide and prenatal sex selection.
Today in China, pre-natal sex selection is widely practiced; unmarried women and fourth children can still be forcibly aborted; and forced abortion and sterilization are still likely used to control disfavored minorities such as ethnic Tibetans and Uighurs. According to the Beijing Declaration – which China signed, as the host country – these are “acts of violence against women.”
And yet, since the inception of the One Child Policy in 1980 -- the women of China have been brutalized by the Chinese Communist Party. Neither the Beijing Declaration nor International Women’s Day has done anything to stop this.
Any restriction on births is a violation of women’s rights, and we call upon the Chinese Communist Party to end all coercive population control, including in Tibet and Xinjiang.
We also call upon the CCP to take effective action to save baby girls. It can be done. We know this because Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is doing it. We are the only organization with a network inside China that has saved hundreds of baby girls from sex-selective abortion, abandonment and extreme poverty. By lifting up the equal dignity of the girl child and providing emotional and financial support, son-preference can be abated, and millions of precious baby girls can be given the chance to draw breath on the face of this earth.
Learn more about our “Save a Girl” campaign in China HERE.
