Sex selection in India ...

It took then-US President Ronald Reagan several years to even mention the word "AIDS," by which time thousands had died and tens of thousands more were infected.

Much in the same way, it has taken Manmohan Singh four years as Prime Minister to finally denounce the wide-spread practice of in utero sex determination and selective abortion of female fetuses in India.

The Lancet once estimated that as many as 10 million female fetuses had been selectively aborted in India between 1986 and 2006. So, we can conservatively guesstimate that approximately 2 million such abortions have occurred since Mr. Singh's election as Prime Minister.

Hopefully the next words out of his mouth will be a clear order to Indian law enforcement agencies to actively implement already existing laws that make the practice of selectively aborting female fetuses illegal, instead of just paying lip-service.

South Korea Rethinks Asia's Preference for Sons

[Hat tip to Jay Hughes for this article]: We've blogged about the perils of sex selection and the predicament of fewer girls being born in Asian and Indian countries, but this article brings some hopeful news:

"In the early 1990s, among Korean women who had already borne two or more children, the sex imbalance was as high as 206 boys for every 100 girls. In those times, it was common for married Korean men to feel ashamed if they had no sons, some went so far as to divorce wives who did not bear boys." Full article here.