Sex-Selective Abortions as an Intellectual Quagmire for Western Gynocentrists

(NB. The subject of this article is the biased thinking of Western intersectional gynocentrists, as demonstrated by the topic of sex-selective abortions. This article is not about my views on abortion.)

In 2025, researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) published a study titled “Indirect evidence of sex-selective abortion practices to the imbalanced sex ratio at birth in Australian migrant populations.” In the study, the researchers examined all registered births in New South Wales and Western Australia between 1994 and 2025, totalling over 2.1 million births. The researchers tested if the male-to-female birth ratio differed between mothers who were born in Australia versus mothers who were born in other countries but gave birth in Australia.

Typically, the male-to-female birth ratio is around 1.05 (i.e., 105 boys born for every 100 girls born). That ratio is roughly what the researchers found when they examined all births in Australia (1.058). However, when the researchers sorted the data by mother’s country of birth, the results changed. Mothers who were born in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom exhibited male-to-female birth ratios around the average: 1.05 to 1.07. However, mothers who were born in India, China, and Vietnam had higher male-to-female birth ratios, and this difference was amplified if the immigrant mothers had previously given birth to daughters. For example, Indian-born and Chinese-born mothers, who had already given birth to two daughters, exhibited male-to-female birth ratios around 1.32, whereas Australian-born mothers, who had also previously birthed two daughters, maintained the usual male-to-female birth ratio of around 1.05 to 1.07.

From the results, the researchers concluded that sex-selective abortions of female fetuses are likely occurring among immigrants from India and China in Australia. Edvardsson and colleagues found similar results in papers published 2018 and 2021, and researchers in the United States and Canada have reported comparable findings.

The response of Western media and academia to the results has been revealing.

Broadly, their concern has been about “gender equality.” The researcher who led the ECU study said: “[w]hile maintaining rights of bodily autonomy, sex-selective abortion should be discouraged, as it undermines broader commitments to gender equality and non-discrimination.” Other Australian researchers added that sex-selective abortions are “reproductive coercion” and are evidence that “systematic discrimination against females starts in the womb.”

Another feature of the Western response has been to ensure that women are not held responsible. Instead, cultural norms are blamed for sex-selective abortions. For example, one media account, citing the United Nations, stated that sex-selective abortions occur because of “deeply entrenched social, economic, cultural and political factors that see women discriminated against in all facets of their lives.”

That explanation might have some truth to it, but it fails to remind readers that half of society is women, and women help create and maintain cultural norms. In fact, mothers-in-law sometimes play a role in sex-selective abortions, as evidenced by this interview response from a woman in India, who had previously undergone two sex-selective abortions:

“This time my mother-in-law wanted a boy. So she decided we should check it (the sex of the foetus). My husband did not say anything. What can I say? I do whatever elderly people in the family say.”

The response from Western intersectional gynocentrists to sex-selective abortions is worth highlighting because it provides another example of their non-objective thinking. On one hand, as gynocentrists, they want women to have the freedom to have abortions. On the other hand, they are concerned about the well-being of female fetuses.

Presumably, Western intersectional gynocentrists never imagined that those two interests would collide. Nevertheless, the collision has occurred, because certain immigrant populations do not share all the same values as Western intersectional gynocentrists. This might surprise some Western intersectional gynocentrists given that they often posture themselves as the voice of “marginalized” groups and allies in the call for education and healthcare to be “decolonized.”

Thus, immigrant communities have placed Western intersectional gynocentrists in an intellectual quagmire, causing them to be torn between their simultaneous allegiances to multiculturalism and gynocentrism. For the Western intersectional gynocentrist, their internal debate is something like: “Should I force my Western values onto non-Western peoples to save female fetuses in the name of “gender equality”?1 Or should I prioritize multiculturalism and the “decolonization” of healthcare, no matter the consequence?”

The response from Western intersectional gynocentrists to sex-selective abortions of female fetuses has been that of a strongly worded letter. To respond tougher than that would make them appear too colonialist, too anti-multicultural, and too intolerant.

This is unlike many other sociopolitical issues, where Western intersectional gynocentrists are comfortable bossing others around and putting on emotional displays about their grievances. Yet, their response to sex-selective abortions has been relatively timid, saying only that the practice should be “discouraged” or “re-negotiated to promote gender equity in a culturally appropriate way.”

One group of Canadian researchers, who largely attributed sex-selective abortions to “social and cultural forces,” threw their hands up and kicked the issue down the road, stating that there is “no simple answer to the issue of prenatal sex selection” and “interventions should further consider the different voices within the affected ethnic groups, particularly those that promote women’s rights and empower women to achieve their potential.”

The timidness of the responses becomes even more apparent when one considers “female genital mutilation.” Female genital mutilation, which is practiced in some countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, is considered a violation of human rights by the United Nations, and it is illegal in Australia and other Western countries.

So, why with “female genital mutilation” do Western intersectional gynocentrists have no problem “colonizing” healthcare and imposing their Western values onto non-Western countries in the name of “gender equality” and “women’s rights”; yet, with sex-selective abortions, they are unwilling to go full bore with their moral disapproval?

The reason is that Western intersectional gynocentrists know that if they push their concerns about sex-selective abortions of female fetuses too far, the result might be greater restrictions on abortions more broadly. This would be devastating to Western intersectional gynocentrists, because freedom to abortion is a key political issue for them. It helps them to shore up a large female voting bloc every election.

“Female genital mutilation” is different, politically. Unlike abortion, “female genital mutilation” is not highly valued or widely practiced in the West, and there is no political constituency to lose by advocating for further restrictions on something that is not widely practiced and that is already widely condemned, if not already illegal.

Importantly, even if one day, Western intersectional gynocentrists do fully condemn sex-selective abortions and propose legislation that would make sex-selective abortions illegal, the legislation would expose another kink in their thinking. Specifically, if one believes that a woman ought to be free to have an abortion, then why would the woman not also be given the freedom to choose what fetus she aborts or keeps, based on the fetus’ sex or other characteristics?

Another potential inconsistency in future legislation would be if the new laws only protect female fetuses. Though such a legal bias might seem far-fetched, such biases already exist in policies and thinking around topics like “gender-based violence,” “genital mutilation,” and protections for sports categories.

Lost in the current conversation about sex-selected abortions are male fetuses.

Consider this: if the natural male-to-female birth ratio is 1.05, this suggests that non-sex-selective abortions are incidentally or unknowingly predominantly impacting one sex more than the other. This seems to be supported by the limited data that I found on the sex of aborted fetuses or embryonic tissue. One study from Japan in the 1970s examined 929 abortions of chromosomally normal embryos. The abortions occurred within 12 weeks after the first day of last menstruation. According to the researchers, the abortions were completed for socioeconomic reasons, not for purposes of sex-selection. Of the 929 embryos aborted, 481 were male and 448 were female, resulting in a male-to-female abortion ratio of 1.07.

Another study from Russia in 2000 examined 78 abortions that were also carried out within the first 12 weeks. The researchers found that 41 of the abortions were male and 37 were female, resulting in a male-to-female abortion ratio of 1.11.

This then illustrates another bias in the thinking of Western intersectional gynocentrists. They have only become concerned about the impact of abortions on “gender equality” when they learned that female fetuses were being disproportionately aborted. This then harkens back to the topic of “genital mutilation,” where Western intersectional gynocentrists only started to condemn such practices when they realised that those practices were impacting the lives of girls and women. Many Western intersectional gynocentrists still do not care that millions of boys have their genitals “mutilated” every year in a cultural practice known as “male circumcision.”

Presented with the possibility that non-sex-selective abortions might incidentally be impacting male fetuses disproportionately, one can imagine the response from Western intersectional gynocentrists. They would start by reminding everyone that women should have the right to an abortion. They would then say that male births already outnumber female births (i.e., the 1.05 male-to-female birth ratio) and that sex-selective abortions have targeted female fetuses for many years. Therefore, in their opinion, women would be fully justified in using their personal autonomy to abort (unknowingly and perhaps knowingly) male fetuses to curtail the “excess” in the male population and make up for a history of lost daughters.

All this would be stated with a straight face, without hesitation, and in the name of “gender equality,” of course.

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