Baby girls in China

I have been reading the book The Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans. It is the story of Karin and her husband's experience of adopting a baby girl and also information about adoption and the history of China's population policy (aka the one and sometimes two child policy). She illuminates the why's of the millions of abandoned babies which is really heart breaking.

I just had no idea that it was so desperate for women in China. I knew that it was very important to have a son, but had no idea the measures at which they(both the goverment and the parents) would take to dispose of their daughters. --Late term abortions, drowning them after birth, abandoning in parks, markets, field, or doorsteps. But also, the government forcing abortions, insertions of IUD' against the will or knowlege of the mother, forcing mothers to get permission for pregnancy, etc. Really though, what was truly the most disheartening was learning about the 'lost girls' .

.....excerpt from The Lost Girls of China,
"Worse, the girls who were found and taken to the institutions were just the tip of the iceberg. Millions more were simply unaccounted for.

When demographers look at the population of a given area, certain patterns tend to hold true. In a natural ration, boys at birth outnumber girls by about 105 to 100, an imbalance that ultimately corrects itself because girls have better survival rates than boys. But in China, the natural order of things has been badly skewed. Millions of girls who would be expected to be in the population today, are missing, gone-so many lost that China is experiencing a "gender gap." By 1992, a survey sponsored by the Chinese government showed that more than 12 % of the Chinese baby girls who should be growing up in that country are simply not there, a percentage that translate to 1.7 MILLION lost girls every year.

In 1996 there were 36 million MORE males than females in China, a figure that cuold just keep climbing, some said reaching 70 million by 2000.

.....It is not only the girls of this generation who are missing today, Overall, 30millsion females in China, a number equivalent to the entire populations of Mexico City, say, or a full 5% of China's population are missing (or 6 times the POPULAtTION of Denmark, I interject)

....Where are the lost women of China?
"Some were killed at birth in the 1930's and40's and so are not present as elderly women today," writes China Wakes co-author Sheryl WuDunn. "SOme died as girls because they were not given adequate food, clothing, and health care. Some died in the 1958-1959 famine because their parents saved rice for their brothers.

Others were victims of ultrasound, were conceived, but never born. Some were born but didn't make it past infancy, and others may have just eluded official recognition."(Evans 118-119)

I am not sure what to do with all of this information and why I posted it here, other than to help make these little girls (and handicapped boys) known to you. Pray as the Lord leads you, I have no wisdom in what to ask....but he knows!