More girls are killed in China and in India than are born in the U.S. each year. Yet this is a universal issue tied to poverty, ignorance and lack of education, and a failure of communities and governments around the world to protect half of their citizens.
Of course, girls have been killed as babies for thousands of years in all societies, the once exception being baby boys born in bordellos -- you know the why.
In many parts of the world, more prevalent in developing countries, but -- even more appalling because of better opportunities and access to education -- in poor and immigrant sectors of developed countries, girls are aborted, abandoned, and killed solely because they are female. The United Nations puts the number at 200 million dead girls and young women worldwide.
Yet the issue is even broader. You have about the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot simply for wanting an education. She is just the most visible face of a pattern of societal neglect, violence, and death at the hands of men, and even their families, their own mothers (yes, there are mothers willing to kill for a son), their fathers, and husbands. Those who make it through are often abandoned, sold, or subjected to unspeakable dowry-borne violence or because they could not bear their husband's a son, and that does not even begin to include what happened to 14-year-old Malala in Pakistan.
There is plenty of blame to be placed on cultures and religions that place a lower economic value on girls, denounce women, and have deeply embedded patriarchal ideologies that ignore the fact that today the other half of the world population is often as much or more capable and, increasingly, better educated, and better equipped to carry the load of a modern family. Of course, there are entrenched interests willing to kill and use intimidation, violence, and rape as tools to keep the status quo. There are poverty-related issues derived from the cost of raising and protecting a girl or young woman vs. the economic value of a boy. That lower projected earning power and the expected loyalty of women to their husbands which is seen as disloyalty to their families take the practice well into the middle class. Not-so shockingly then, where poverty is not an issue, cultural practices perpetuate the lower status and subjugation of women.
Just in case anyone is thinking of blaming those "other" cultures and religions, it should be remembered in the West that the Biblical Eve is blamed for the fall of man. Just like the Jews blamed for the death of Christ, women have borne the blame for the fallen nature of man with the full weight of the prejudice and discrimination that entails.
Too far away, too long ago? Think again. Last year, the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives, ostensibly a staunchly anti-abortion bunch, rejected by a vote of 246 to 168 legislation aimed at curbing sex-selection-based abortions (read: killing girl babies), a practice that occurs at alarming rates in the U.S. among various immigrant groups.
As the father of beautiful, precious girls, as a husband, and a son, I am offended by this devaluing and disregard for female life. How could we? How can we? How can we stand silent in front of a global conspiracy of governments and doctors and families mired in ignorance that kills females in such a massive scale? Where is the voice of the pro-lifers? So loud and zealous about abortion but silent on this? Where are the families and communities that should be the sacred centers of safety and security for everyone?
I submit to all who have felt the need to protect and defend the innocent, that we are already some 200,000,000 (that is two-hundred-million) souls too late, but that there is still time for action to protect the life, worth, and dignity of women wherever they may live.
To paraphrase Stalin, two-hundred-million is simply a statistic, but we are savvy enough to see this as an individual tragedy that has played itself two-hundred million times without effective action or a even a serious global movement to put an end to it. For the sake of the women that I love and whom I would protect with my life, for the sake of the woman that you are or that you love, for the grace that has given them a better chance at life than to millions other "daughters of Eve," I pray that you are moved and outraged by the scale of this tragedy, and that your outrage turns into action.
