The Local reported June 23 on Swedish parents who are keeping their 2-year-old's gender a secret. They're raising a not very funny Saturday Night Live Pat.

The child was called "Pop" for the interview with parents, but is not the child's real name:

Pop's parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop's sex a secret. Aside from a select few - those who have changed the child's diaper - nobody knows Pop's gender; if anyone enquires, Pop's parents simply say they don't disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction....

by intern Andy M.

Pro-life groups throughout New Zealand are voicing concern at the news that the American-designed IntelliGender test kit will be made available as soon as June 22. The kit can apparently be used from 8 weeks after conception and is already selling well in Australia, just a month after its introduction to the market there. It is sold for ~$125 without a prescription.

Of course, the question is - what's the rush? While some couples prefer to keep the gender of their child as a surprise, others like to find out early on. Some are curious - others simply want to start decorating baby's room in the appropriate colors and purchasing either pink or blue baby clothes.

But how many are likely to fork out $125 for 1 of these innocent reasons when they could have simply waited until the baby was 18 weeks and received a free government-funded ultrasound, as is offered in NZ?...

It's hard to find news in MSM on this groundbreaking legislation today. Maybe it doesn't understand the ramifications. Maybe it does.

10th paragraph down in Tulsa World today:

[Gov. Brad] Henry also signed a measure banning abortion based on gender.

That's it. But I've checked with 2 national pro-life groups this morning, and to their knowledge this is the 1st sex-selection abortion ban to pass in the country....

I was shocked the other day to read the father of Slumdog Millionaire child star Rubina Ali had been caught in an undercover sting by News of the World offering to sell his daughter to a Middle Eastern sheikh poser, which Ali later denied. Here's the video report...

Then Rubina's mother and stepmother were caught on video pathetically fighting over the claims...

In 2006 the Council of Europe reported worldwide sex trafficking had reached "'epidemic proportions' over the past decade," according to the Associated Press.

A significant reason for the surge is the shortage of girls created by sex selection abortions, particularly in Asia, but now infiltrating the Asian cultures in the U.S. according to the Boston Globe.

It is widely acknowledged that legalized prostitution exacerbates the problem. Explains the 2005 report,"The demand for victims of sex trafficking":

Analyzing trafficking and prostitution as parts of an interlocking system reveals how the components are linked, and studying the dynamics of supply and demand for victims reveals what keeps the system working. The trafficking process begins with the demand for women to be used in prostitution.

A major U.S. sex trafficking gateway? San Francisco. Reported the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006...

A press release yesterday from the Indian Hindu reform group Navya Shastra called on Hindus to "allow daughters to impart final rites at the funerals of their parents."

A NS rep explained, "One religious reason why boys are favored among Hindus is because of the anachronistic belief that only a son can formally conduct this ceremony, so a girl is totally worthless in this regard."

I found this information fascinating. According to Webhealing.com...

By Bethany Kerr:

From News Weekly, Austrailia, Mar. 31, 2007:

"Every year in March, the United Nations has a two-week Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session on women's issues. The session usually concludes with an interminable debate about "reproductive rights", and this year's (the 51st) was no exception.

Radical feminists subscribe to an overriding verity: abortion on demand is fundamental to "women's rights". However, feminists have been mugged by an unpleasant reality: the overwhelming number of abortions in the world are of female foetuses, victims of sex-selection abortions. So non-government organisation (NGO) feminists at the UN have come up with a new most estimable slogan: killing a "girl child" in the womb is "the most extreme form of violence against women".

Their remaining problem is how to reconcile the contradictory positions of calling for unrestricted abortion while deploring the abortion of female foetuses...

At CSW 51, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) supported a resolution banning sex-selection abortions.

And what about male children? Why aren't they important?

Read this excerpt from JME online, concerning feminists and sex selection abortion:

Whatever the specific reasons are for abortion, most feminists believe that the women concerned are in the best position to judge whether abortion is the appropriate response to pregnancy. Because usually only the woman choosing abortion is properly situated to weigh all the relevant factors, most feminists resist attempts to offer general, abstract rules for determining when abortion is morally justified . . . . Despite the diversity of opinion found among feminists on most other matters, most feminists agree that women must gain full control over their own reproductive lives if they are to free themselves from male dominance.7 Sex selected abortion, however, is seen as an instrument and consequence of male dominance that feminists are committed to oppose. It has been observed that "[m]any feminists view any efforts to plan the sex of future children as epitomising sexism".8 Writing about abortion in 1986, a prominent prochoice advocate stated: "we believe abortion-for-gender choice is an unqualified moral wrong".9 Opposition to means of sex selection that are made possible by PGD and sperm sorting avoids the dilemma posed by sex selected abortion, and affords opponents the support of conservative antiabortion agencies, as well as of others committed to the elimination of the pro-male sexism that sex selection is seen to represent.

How is this "violence", or "morally wrong" , when compared to abortions that are performed "because I don't want another baby", which is supposedly an acceptable excuse? Explain the difference. Someone.

Hasn't the pro-life crowd been shouting this truth, that abortion is violence, from the rooftops for decades now? Why is it that only when it comes to gender selection the pro-abortion feminists cry out "violence!"?

And would they cry out at all, I wonder...if gender sex-selection was more likely to target boys?