Inter Press Service examines the history of sex selection, particularly in Asia, and how the effects of a global gender imbalance are affecting women. “Asia is now facing serious consequences from sex selection, a situation the West might have inadvertently helped create,” the news service writes and details a brief history of population control in developing countries. “Sex-selective abortion spread throughout countries like India and China,” and the “method was openly endorsed by Population Council President Bernard Berelson, German scientist Paul Ehrlich and even some women such as former U.S. Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce,” according to the news service.

“Still, it’s a stretch to solely blame the West for sex-selection in Asia, Lena Edlund, an economics professor at Columbia University, told IPS,” the news service writes, adding, “She believes the introduction of fertility technology made sex selection much easier, but it is the cultural norms and the willingness to reject a female child that mattered most.” IPS discusses the possible repercussions of sex selection, including the inability of men to find female counterparts, increased sex trafficking, forced marriages, forced prostitution, and trans-border marriages where women in poor areas are married off to men in richer regions” (Panagoda, 2/21).