A mother in Germany has been arrested on the suspicion that she killed three newborn babies and kept them in her freezer.

The babies were - surprise - girls.

Three baby girls kept in freezer

The woman in question had three living children - two sons and one daughter.

As I was searching the Internet for articles in English about this case, I came across an article about an unrelated case in France, where a mother similarly kept a newborn dead baby girl in her freezer.

French mother kept baby girl in freezer

You know why I bring this up - just to insist that those parents and mothers who do this sort of thing will do it primarily to their daughters, not to their sons.

Ann

And, as always, I think your logic is flawed, Ann, and does a disservice to your genuine concern for the abused. Your logic for this theory is entirely dependant on you ignoring any story with male victims which doesn't fit your preferred theory.

If I were keen - and believe me, I'm not - I could find, in under an hour, a hundred similar stories in which males were the victims.

But I'll leave you with just one. This week, in a tragic story in the UK, a father drove his two young sons to a local beauty spot and brutally stabbed them to death. Not a female victim in sight.

Once again, personally, I'd be much more sympathetic to your viewpoints if your concern stretched to encompass all victims of violence, and not just females.

LabRat

My point is that more girls than boys are killed by their own parents, certainly by their own mothers.

Many years ago, I read an article about "murder patterns" for men and women. This article said that those men who kill people primarily kill other men, but they kill women, too. Women who commit murder also kill men, but almost never other women. With one exception. Women, said the article, sometimes kill their daughters. Nothing was said to suggest that women killed their sons as often as they killed their daughters.

And the reason why I try to raise a racket about this is that no one else does. Because it seems to me that we are in a state of denial about the excess murders of girls.

Ann

Your point may or may not be valid, but you've given no evidence to support it. One or two instances does not support such a broad theory. You need to point to a large study done by a reputable organization, not sensationalized news stories.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Is there a *proper* number of murder of girls?

I think your logic is flawed here as well. Going by your summary of the article (I wish you had linked it so we could all decide for ourselves), the author was making the point that although women seldom kill other adult females, they do sometimes kill child females (ie their daughters). The point was not that they kill daughters more than sons. The point was that they kill female children more than female adults.

Tragic things happen everyday. It's an unfortunate part of life. But "raising a racket" by making broad and unsubstantiated claims about who kills who and why doesn't help matters.

~Anna

When I hear about stories of children being murdered or any gruesome horrific act such as the one you were referring to, I never even notice if it was a boy or girl. Just that it was a human being or that it was a child who missed out on their life and the experience of having loving parents to nurture them.

I don't deny the fact that there is definitely prejudice against women many places in the world but I don't think that every time a woman or girl is killed, it's because they were female. I think that you may feel that way when you read these stories because you feel so strongly about the oppression/inequality of women and thereby perhaps insinuate your beliefs onto the case, whatever it may be.

It doesn't mean that this sort of thing never happens; only that more evidence would be needed to support that theory.

EDIT: Here is a link to the US Bureau of Justice with child homicide statisics. This is only the US' statistics so not sure what other country's statistics would be...
Child Homicide Statistics

I, too, see this as a flawed argument. Just today we had a story in my paper about a woman who drowned her baby BOY in a bathtub. And correct me if I am wrong, but four of the five children that Andrea Yates killed were boys, as well as the two that Susan Smith drove into a lake.

THIS is why the media gets accused of bias. They use two or three cases as an example and boom, a theory is born. Never mind that it's totally slanted. It's like using quotes from three women who are anti-abortion and then stating that clearly, women in general are opposed to abortion.

And as someone who has had fertility problems, it doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl, it's reprehensible.

Having read the article Ann, you've made your assupmtions purely based on what the media has written and that is wrong.

The reports only indicate that foul play has been involved and nothing is concrete as the results of the autopsy still appear to be in it's priliminary stages with toxicology results to come.

I'm in complete agreement with Jenn and Anna's posts in how the media plays part and can often sensationalise everything. I won't go into how many incidences where the media has played part in the ruling of the court system and also in formulating the opinion of the public. The Lindy Chamberlain case over 20 years ago wherein she was accused of killing her baby in the Australian Outback is one that springs to mind

Azaria Chamberlain Disappearance

In the end the conviction was overturned, but the point I'm trying to make is that the media latched on to a case and helped formulate the opinion of the public based on circumstancial evidence.

Labbie's right your theory is based on only two known cases hardly enough to indicate that daughters are often the ones who parents murder. While yes in some countries it is known that daughters are not preferred this does not mean that they are the only ones who suffer abuse or are murdered because over the last few years the few high profile child murder cases have involved boys and not girls.

By this statement at least in my mind you seem to be implying that murder is accpetable because you are telling us that there is an excess number of murdered girls in the world. Murder is wrong regardless of whether the victim is male or female.

I wholeheartedly agree with Anna on this one! While I respect your's and everyone else's opinions based on what you have said I'm not inclined to agree with your statement that the murder of girls is more prevalent than the murder of boys.

Obviously baby boys get killed as well.

But every time I come across a rather gruesome story about murdered children, or for that matter every time I read about a dead baby that has been found somewhere, I try to learn about the sex of the child. Often the newspapers don't report it, at least initially. When I first read about the very recent case in Germany about the babies in the freezer, nothing was said, initially, about the gender of the babies. Yesterday one Swedish newspaper wrote about the case again and mentioned, in passing, that the three babies were all girls. I started googling for articles in English about the case, which I could post here. However, all the articles I found at first were the kinds that didn't mention the dead babies' gender. I had to search for "baby girls in freezer" in order to find what I was looking for. And even then, the first hits I got still didn't mention the dead babies' sex, but instead said that a boy and a "girl" had found the babies, or that the suspected mother of the dead babies already had two boys and a "girl".

In most of the cases where small babies are killed, newspapers often don't mention whether the children are boys or girls, at least not on the first day, when the case usually gets the biggest headlines. As if the baby's gender doesn't matter too much. But my point is that it matters tremendously, because a newborn baby hasn't yet got a "personality". It hasn't got a "history". The mother doesn't yet know what it is like to take care of this child. All the mother really knows about the newborn baby is that it is a baby, and it is a girl - or it is a boy. If baby girls are killed more often than baby boys, that strongly suggests that more mothers are willing to kill a child only because it is a girl.

I looked up the Andrea Yates case. You can read about it here. I think it is worth noticing, among other things, that Andrea Yates first had four sons. She suffered from severe depressions and other mental problems and tried to kill herself. But it was only after she had her first daughter that she turned her violence against her children and killed them, even if this didn't happen when her daughter was newborn.

There were no mitigating circumstances in the Susan Smith case, as far as I can see. But I can say that my own sister-in-law very nearly became a witness when a Swedish mother drove her two small daughters into a lake in Sweden a few years ago. Both girls died. But the case received so little attention here in Sweden that I never read about it in the papers, and I only know of it because my sister-in-law told me.

I'm not saying that no mothers ever kill their sons. Things don't work like that. There are no gender absolutes. You can't say that there are no female school shooters or that there are no female pedophiles. That is simply not true. There are women who do all sorts of things, and there are men who do all sorts of things.

I'll keep insisting, however, that more newborn girls than newborn boys get killed by their mothers. I insist that more newborn girls than boys get killed, period. We know for a fact that it is like that if we consider the whole world. Huge numbers of girls are killed the two most populous countries in the world, China and India.

Female infanticide in India and China

Infanticide, Abortion Responsible for 60 Million Girls Missing in Asia

We in the West like to say to ourselves that we are not like that, but we don't take a hard look at ourselves to see if our self-satisfied assumptions are true or not. What will happen the day scientists come up with an easy way for parents to decide even before conception if their baby will be a boy or a girl? Will boys and girls still be born in more or less equal numbers? And what will happen if significantly more parents want boys rather than girls, and girls become a "natural resource" in short supply? Today we already have a situation where women and children, mostly girl children, are being traded like goods. Large numbers of women, mostly from poorer countries in eastern Europe and from Asia and Africa, are being brought to western Europe to be forced into prostitution. I saw a documentary from China about the lucrative slave trade of women there. Girls and young women are kidnapped and sold as wives to the growing number of men who can't get a wife any other way, because of the increasing shortage of young women in China.

It drives me crazy that no one talks about these things, that's all. I'm not trying to say that each and every woman would rather have sons than daughters, believe me. I know that is not true. Believe me, I, too, have heard expectant mothers say, "I hope it is a girl". I don't doubt for a moment that most mothers here in the West are happy about the children they get, whether they are boys or girls. I'm just saying that one day parents will get the chance to choose the gender of their children even before the woman has become pregnant in the first place. What will happen then? Will most parents still be happy to let nature choose the sex of their child? Will a significant number of parents decide to choose their baby's gender for themselves? And will we still get an equal number of boys and girls when parents can "shop" for the sex of their child? And if we no longer get an equal number of boys and girls in our societies, how will that affect our lives?

Ann

Have you looked up actual statistics about this, Ann? Or are you just going off of various stories you've heard about/read?

If we are going to have intellectual conversations like this then you need to have actual statistics (and a source) to back up your statements. It's just good debate form. You make a claim, then you present evidence to support it. If you have no proof, then it's just an opinion.

For some reason, the second link I posted about 60 million missing girls in Asia won't open. So I'll post a Wikipedia link instead.

According to this link, female infanticide is not a problem limited to poor people or poor families. Instead, it may sometimes be more common among the wealthy.

EDIT: The link that wouldn't open recently can be opened now.

Ann

That's fine, but as it can be altered by anybody, Wikipedia is not generally considered a credible source.

I thought you were arguing girls vs. boys, not rich vs. poor?

It's true that Wikipedia entries can be changed by anybody, so here are a few other links:

For Indias daughters, a dark birth day

BBC: Facts about female infanticide

Born to Die

Female Infanticide

End the biggest holocaust in human history: Female infanticide/feticide!

As for the rich vs. poor argument, it has sometimes been said that poor people preferentially kill their daughters because they can't feed them, but since that is not a problem for us in the West, female infanticide can't happen here. I just wanted to say that female infanticide happens among rich people, too.

Ann

Neglect also pereferentially kills girls, not just outright infanticide and feticide. This is from the first link I quoted ( Case Study: Female Infanticide) :

This quote doesn't clearly stress that boys are given better health care than girls, although it mentions it in passing. I have read elsewhere that this is a typical pattern in many countries. If health care is costly, then it is often just the boys who are considered worth the expenditure of it. If health care is merely an annoyance, for example so that a parent has to stay home from work one day to bring his or her child to a hospital, then it may still only be the boys who are considered worth the sacrifice.

I recently brought up the Madeline Neumann case. Madeline's parents acted very strangely when they refused to take their daughter to hospital, despite what must have been her steadily worsening condition. They chose to pray for her instead of taking her to hospital, rather than pray for her and take her to hospital. I recently suggested that the Neumanns might have opted to take their seriously sick child to hospital if the child had been a boy instead of a girl. Of course I realize that we are talking about an individual case and two parents whose motivations no outsiders can truly know anything about. But let me say that Madeline's case fits a pattern. A child gets sick, the child is a girl, and the parents don't take their daughter to hospital. The girl dies.

Ann

Madeline's parents while their behaviour was unusual, it isn't all that uncommon Ann. Many people with strong religious convictions opt to pray for a miracle. I'm not saying I don't believe in the power of prayer because I do I've had many prayer meetings with friends for various things and wholeheartedly believe that God is listening to our prayers. I've heard many parents refuse to vaccinate their child regardless of whether they are male or female.

However, you only know of the case from an external point of view and a wild accusation such as the one you made that implies that Madeline's parents would have taken her to hospital if she'd been a boy is again wrong. You don't know the circumstances of the situation. Some people just don't trust doctors or have had bad experiences you don't know.

While it's true that many women are forced into prostitution you also shouldn't imply that all are forcibly taken because again it is another wild accusation. You don't know the circumstances that got them there like say for example the drug use. All you are seeing is again what the media paints or what you have heard.

In regards to what I read and hear I prefer to keep an open mind and not let news reports sway my convictions straight away until I have all the facts. For example I've read stories in various newspapers and the watched the TV news and noticed many inconsistencies in the reports for this reason I don't rely on one source for my information.

Like I said, there is no way that I can know that Madeline Neumann's parents would have taken her to hospital if she had been a boy. I'm just saying that there is a pattern which says that some parents take their sons to hospital, but not their daughters.

This, however, is not an American pattern. Neglecting to take your daughter to hospital is in no way whatsoever a part of American mainstream culture. Instead, I'm sure that the overwhelming number of Americans (and Europeans) know that if their child dies because they have wilfully neglected to take him or her to hospital, everyone around them will be absolutely horrified. Doing that sort of thing to your child is not only bad, it is unthinkable. If you let your behaviour be guided by mainstream American or European culture or thought patterns, it is unthinkable to neglect your child like that.

But I think that Madeline's parents are so religious that they can't fully be regarded as loyal to American mainstream culture. I refuse to believe that most Americans think it would be okay to let their child slowly waste away and do nothing more than pray for him or her!

Because the Neumanns were so religious, they let their religious belief guide them when it came to their approach to their daughter's illness, not the question of what others would do or what others would think.

Other strong beliefs, not only religious ones, can similarly affect a person so that he or she behaves in a way that is not acceptable according to the mainstream culture of the country where this person lives.

So causing the death of young girls by neglecting to take them to hospital when they are seriously ill, although you would take the girl's brother to hospital if he suffered from the same illness, is not part of American culture. But I strongly believe that it is part of the traditions in some other countries. I have read a lot of feminist literature and also reports from the United Nations which strongly suggest that there are countries and cultures where girls don't get as much or as good health care as boys receive.

But to the very best of my knowledge, there are no countries or cultures that preferentially mistreat boys, so that boy children get less health care than girl children.

Why would there be cultures - several cultures - that preferentially mistreat girl children in terms of health care, but possibly no cultures that preferentially mistreat boy children when it comes to health care?

This is what I believe. Bottom line, it has to do with deeper and more fundamental things than cultures and thought patterns. My answer is that so many people believe, deep down and perhaps on a subconscious level, that boys are more valuable than girls. Because of that belief, it becomes easier to to turn female infanticide into something socially acceptable - to turn it, in fact, into a part of a culture. It may not be exactly nice to kill your daughter, but people will understand you if you do it. Because she was only a girl, after all.

I believe that this "higher estimation of boys" may be something universal. I'm not saying that it is so strong that people normally will not want to keep their daughters. Of course not. But an instinctive feeling that boys are a little more valuable than girls may be there anyway.

Suppose it is "normal" or "human" to place a higher value on boys than on girls. If you live in America or in Europe, you are not allowed to act on that preference very much, because our cultures force us to take care of our children regardless of their gender. If you don't do that, you may be ostracized, or the social services may take your children away from you. But if you have a strong alternative belief, so that you don't much care what the mainstream culture of your country teaches, you may listen to your deep subconscious preferences instead. And just possibly, these subconscious preferences may tell you that a daughter's illness might present the perfect opportunity to test your own religious faith, whereas a son's illness would prompt you to take him to hospital after all.

Okay. Am I jumping to conclusions here? Yes, I realize that I definitely might be. But is it certain that what I say is nonsense? I ask you to at least consider the possibility that our future ability to preselect the sex of our children may have dire consequences for society, and certainly for women and for anything resembling equality between the sexes, if you believe in that sort of thing. If, when push comes to shove, people really prefer to have more sons than daughters, what will our society be like?

Ann

Ann, I like to stay out of these debates becuase I usually don't agree with your statements so I keep my opinions to myself. However, this statement seems a bit ridiculous. Since the beginning of time, men and women have existed. Women have been gaining more and more respect, power, ane equality with each passing decade. To even think that eventually one gender will, in effect, die out seems kind of crazy to me. If we've been able to survive this long what makes you think that society will shift so much that women will no longer exist?

Even if your claims are true that in certain areas people prefer sons to daughters, I have to disagree that it will become a widespread societal problem. And not because our cultures "force" us to care no matter what gender. I believe more in human nature forcing us to love our children.

I'm sorry, Ann, but I really don't understand where you are getting your obviously very steadfast opinions from. I have certainly not witnessed any kind of "higher estimation of boys" that would cause me any concern about our society. While I am just a college student living in the United States, I do look at world news. I know bad things happen out there, but certainly not biased towards females enough to cause widespread alarm that one day the entire global society will make it alright for people to choose having boys over girls.

~Kristen

Not sure if anyone checked out the link I posted in my first post but that is the US governement website and the last graph shows that males kill more male babies than female. It shows that females generally kill about the same number of female & male babies, different spikes in different years.

Thanks for the link, Steph! Very, very interesting. It could be, indeed, that people in the United States truly appreciate girls as much as they like boys, and that your country will still produce a roughly equal number of boys and girls when it becomes medically possible to pre-select the gender of one's child. If that is true about your country, then let me say that my admiration for America will increase almost exponentially. Moreover,if you manage to keep sex rates equal when people get to choose the sex of their children themselves, then you will be in my book such a shining example to the world, and such an inspiration and a bringer of hope. And I mean that, without irony.

You may know that I was raised on the Bible. Well, in the Bible there are many stories about proud mothers giving birth to sons, but, to my knowledge, only one story which even mentions the name of a woman who gave birth to a daughter. The woman in question was Leah, one of Jacob's wives, who gave birth to a daughter, Dinah. Well, Leah also had six sons, and Dinah probably gave Leah little joy, as she caused trouble for her entire family by having an unsuitable love affair. Compare that will all the stories about mothers who had important sons: Sarah gave birth to Isaac, Rebecca to Jacob, and Leah and Rachel had many important sons. Hannah was the mother of Samuel, the prophet. Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist, and Mary had Jesus, of course. So the Bible often celebrates a woman for having a son, but it doesn't exactly tell a woman that it is great to have a daughter.

If you read, say, ancient Greek mythology, you also don't get the impression that women are as valuable as men. I have read claims that female infanticide was common in ancient Greece. In the Bible there are more examples of "trafficking": town are raided and razed, but the young women from those towns are kidnapped and forced into marriage with Hebrew men.

Here's a link which summarizes the problem about "missing women", the excess killing of women and female infanticide:

Missing Women

It is of course possible to say that none of this is true, or if it is true, it doesn't really matter. I try to argue that it is true, and that female infanticide and other forms of comparatively killings of women happen in many countries and cultures, not only China and India.

This link claims that the Romans brought female infanticide with them wherever they went and exported it to the countries which they conquered:

What the Romans did to us

In other parts of the world, there are other practises which also lead to an unnaturally high mortality for women. For example, in many parts of Africa, HIV has increasingly become a women's disease:

Why We Are Failing African Girls

Note that it says that African girls are sometimes raped by men who are HIV-positive, because these men believe that they themselves will be cured of the disease if they have sex with a virgin. (And of course, if these men rape a very young girl, the chances are better that she is a virgin.)

The article says that girls in Tanzania and Zambia get infected at a younger age than boys, so that three times as many girls aged 15-19 are infected as boys the same age. This must almost invariably lead to a very high mortality rate for women in these countries, because you must remember that there is no cure for AIDS, and relatively few people in Africa can afford the drugs that keep the disease under control.

Anyway, is "gender planning" for babies a problem at all? According to this article from The Observer, clinics which offer parents the chance to select their baby's gender already exist in Great Britain and the United States:

There are fears that those who ask for help to select their children's gender often prefer boys:

(HFEA means Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.)

But let me return to your graph, Steph. A problem with it is that it talks about children under five, rather than children under one. At two, three or four years of age, children have certainly developed a "personality", and they can be killed because of that personality. It is only when babies are close to newborn that they can be killed for their sex only.

But as far as it goes, the graph certainly suggests that there is no excessive violence against girls in America, and that American parents and American people in general value girls as highly as boys.

Ann

I think it's interesting that you chose this incident to again point out what you think about woman and their role in society. I'm not going to comment on whether I think you're right or wrong.

There was another tragedy about the same time in Austria. A man kept his daughter in captivation in his cellar. He had raped her over several years and fathered seven children. Moreover he raised some of their children with his wife, telling everyone what a bad mother his daughter was. He claimed that he didn't know where she was and that she had left her children alone, leaving them at his door step.

Ann, since you had to use an example from Germany, I think I should say what I noticed - or didn't notice.

First of all, lately there are often occurences of infanticide. And, although these occurences are only recently being noticed, many of them happened one or even two decades back. Whether this happens to more boys than girls, I cannot say. I never noticed anything odd. But there seem to be two groups of women who commit infanticide: On the one hand, it's very young, often teenage mothers who kill their first baby in a state of shock because until the end, they denied their pregnancy. On the other hand, it's women who've already had several children and don't want to have any more of them. These are the notorious (or habitual?) baby killers. And, interesting enough, their husbands claim equivocally to haven't noticed their wives' pregnancies. Honestly, how can they be so blind?

Second, when it comes to killing older children, I'm not sure if there is a difference between the number of boys versus girls. Maybe so, maybe no.

Third: There definitely is a gap between the number of girls and boys abducted/abused/killed by an out-of-family party. Through my years actively reading newspapers (even if it was only yellow press, which I preferred as a eight-to-ten-year-old), there were countless cases of girls disappearing and turning up dead and, often, mutilated or abused. I only remember two or three cases where boys happened to be the victims. And in one of these cases, it was a couple of siblings (boy and girl).

Ann, next time you post something like this, could you please phrase the title in such a way that, if we don't want to read about this kind of subject, we don't have to have it shoved in our faces every time we read the Off Topic section? I would appreciate it if you would at least try.

Thanks.

Tara

The reason why I chose to bring up the case from Germany is not that it was from Germany. It was, rather, that it reinforced a conclusion I had drawn due to the fact that the sex ratio for abandoned and/or killed babies in Sweden has been so incredibly skewed. The number of abandoned or killed babies has been small, no doubt partly because it is so easy to have an abortion in Sweden. Those women who absolutely don't want to have a baby can easily have an early abortion.

All in all, I know of about fifteen cases in Sweden during the last circa thirty-five years. That is not a lot. But I remember the cases, because the newspapers always wrote a lot every time a dead or abandoned child was found, and it took only two cases until I noticed that both babies were girls. And then it went on like that. Dead or abandoned girls, girls, girls. Only one baby was definitely a boy, and in his case the mother hadn't looked at the baby before she wrapped him in towels and plastic bags and put him in the freezer. That mother, however, had clearly stated that she preferred boys over girls, and she had already had three girls whom she had given away for adoption, which is an extremely uncommon thing to do in Sweden.

So I have nothing against Germany, and I have no specific preconceived notions about Germany, or at least I don't think that I do. I just noticed the case because it said that there were three dead babies and all were girls, and I thought to myself, how typical. It's just like in Sweden!

Right now Swedish newspapers have reported about case in Austria where a man killed his wife, his child, his parents and his father-in-law. Was his child a boy or a girl? It was a girl. Maybe it is just as common that parents kill their sons, but the cases that I read about in the newspapers mostly seem to deal with murdered girls.

Tara: Next time I'll think about phrasing the title so that it is obvious that I'm going to talk about the selective killing of girls. In my own defence, however, it seems to me that the title I chose for this thread might have suggested that I would bring up something like that here.

Ann

I don't think that's what she means. I don't think she's offended that the thread is about the selective killing of girls, I think she means she wants you to tone down the title a little bit, such as "Infanticide" instead of "dead babies in freezer" which is gross, and every time someone posts in this thread, it's bumped and you have to see the words "dead babies in freezer" over and over again, which is uncomfortable for someone who doesn't want to read about it.

That would be my point exactly, Trinity. Thanks.

Tara

Okay. I get it.

Ann

I (and I'm pretty sure Mellie as well) didn't mean to imply that you think that Germany - for the well-known reason - would be just the right country for this to happen. Assuming that Germans in general are more evil than any other people is so naive that I wouldn't even consider you could think such a thing.

The point is that - like Mellie - I don't think that a mother who would kill her child in a moment of sheer panic would consider the sex of the child beforehand.

Truth is - more baby girls than boys are born alive. Having two x chromosomes, girls just don't suffer from some diseases that would kill boys before they would ever be born. So statistically, I wouldn't be astonished if more baby girls were killed.

Remember - statistically you can proof that the storch brings the babies. That doesn't make it true.

I don't really believe that. In most Western countries, more boys than girls are born alive. Indeed, I know that in Sweden, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls and that sex ratio has remained constant for at least a hundred years. Yes, I know that more boys are spontaneously aborted due to various defects, but that still doesn't change the fact that slightly more boys than girls are born alive in our part of the world. I'm almost certain that the same sex ratio can be found in most Western countries.

What I ask myself is, how likely is it that it might be sheer coincidence that thirteen out of fifteen newborn and abandoned or killed babies are girls, and only one is definitely a boy? (The sex of one baby was never disclosed.) What are the mathematical, statistical odds that this could be sheer coincidence, in view of the fact that slightly more boys than girls are in fact born alive in the West?

I find it just too improbable that this kind of sex ratio among the dead and "discarded" babies would be coincidence. And that is precisely why I always notice the gender of any baby that is found dead. However, I have to admit - there was a case in Denmark perhaps a year ago, when a baby boy was found. I think he was alive, and he was eventually adopted by a couple.

Ann

As for that case in Denmark, when a baby boy was found abandoned but alive. In Sweden during the last circa ten years, all abandoned newborn babies have been found dead, and all but one of them have been girls. If you assume, as I do, that practically no mothers want to kill their newborn sons, but some of them do want to kill their newborn daughters, then it makes sense that the boy in Denmark was found alive. His mother felt unable to take care of him, but she really wanted him to survive. He was her son, after all.

I know that some parents do kill their sons, but I don't think that parents ever kill their sons because they are boys. No, I think it is the boys' habits or quirks or irritating behaviour that drive their parents crazy and provoke them to commit murder. I do think, however, that some parents are willing to kill their daughters, or take insufficient care of their daughters, because the daughters are girls. If you consider that new case in Austria, the man who killed his daughter didn't do it because the girl drove him crazy with her behaviour. No, he wanted to obliterate his entire family so that he wouldn't have to tell them that he had squandered a large sum of money. He was prepared to kill his own child to cover up his shame. Would he have been willing to kill his child for that sort of reason, though, if the child had been a boy? Personally, I strongly doubt it. A son's life is so valuable to a father that I really doubt that the father would be willing to kill his son just to save his own dignity. But his daughter's life may be worth less to the man than his own loss of standing in the eyes of his family. At the very least, I don't know of a case where a man went on a murder spree which started with his own killing of his own son.


Don't kill your son! God stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.



But God didn't stop Jephthah from sacrificing his daughter. But then, she was only a girl. (Judges, chapter 11.)

Ann

You are right Ann, that Abraham was stopped from sacrificing Isaac and that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter but the circumstances are completely different and does not show any favoritism on God's part.

God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son in order to test him. God knew he would never have Abraham go through with it but wanted to see if Abraham was willing to follow God's will, even if it meant sacrificing his beloved son.

Jephthah made a foolish vow all on his own: that if God were to give the Ammonites over to him, he would sacrifice the first thing that ran out of his front door upon returning home. God did not say he needed to make this vow or that he wouldn't have given the Ammonites over to him anyways. Nor does it say what would have happened to Jephthah had he not followed through with sacrificing his daughter. In this story, God was not testing Jephthah, he commited that atrocity all on his own.

People do foolish things in the Bible all the time, that are not sanctioned by God. For example, when Saul and his army were going to fight the Philistines, Saul made a very foolish vow: 1 Samuel 14:24-30

24 Now the men of Israel were in distress that day, because Saul had bound the people under an oath, saying, "Cursed be any man who eats food before evening comes, before I have avenged myself on my enemies!" So none of the troops tasted food.

25 The entire army [d] entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground. 26 When they went into the woods, they saw the honey oozing out, yet no one put his hand to his mouth, because they feared the oath. 27 But Jonathan had not heard that his father had bound the people with the oath, so he reached out the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He raised his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened. [e] 28 Then one of the soldiers told him, "Your father bound the army under a strict oath, saying, 'Cursed be any man who eats food today!' That is why the men are faint."

29 Jonathan said, "My father has made trouble for the country. See how my eyes brightened [f] when I tasted a little of this honey. 30 How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?"

Jonathan does not end up getting killed/sacrificed by his father because his men stand up for him.

43 Then Saul said to Jonathan, "Tell me what you have done."

So Jonathan told him, "I merely tasted a little honey with the end of my staff. And now must I die?"

44 Saul said, "May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if you do not die, Jonathan."

45 But the men said to Saul, "Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the LORD lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God's help." So the men rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death.

You are right about what you say about Jephthah's idiotic vow. That vow was the thing that made the poor girl's death happen.

Suppose, though, that Jephthah's child had been a boy. Would God just have accepted that Jephthah killed his son just so that he could fulfill his vow to God? Frankly, I don't believe it. There are many passages in the Bible that most strenuously forbid the sacrificing of sons. Yes, there are also passages that forbid the sacrificing of sons and daughters, but there are no passages that single out the sacrificing of daughters as forbidden in itself. To me, there is no doubt that the Bible speaks with more vehemence when it forbids the sacrificing of sons than when it forbids the sacrificing of daughters.

I just don't believe that the Bible would have allowed Jephthah to kill his son in the same way and under the same circumstances that he killed his daughter. Remember that Jephthah is not given any sort of punishment for killing his daughter, and God makes no sort of comment whatsoever to argue that it would have been better to let the girl live. And Jephthah does not try to plead with God to spare his daughter's life. If the child had been a son, surely Jephthah would have asked God for mercy, and surely God would have granted it. And if Jephthah hadn't tried to plead with God, but had carried out the sacrifice of his son anyway, surely God would have punished him one way or another. Because the Old Testament does not allow fathers to kill their sons. It is far less obvious that it forbids fathers to kill their daughters.

Ann

What I'm wondering about all this is how it all comes around to mentioning what you've read in the Bible, Ann? For someone who doesn't seem ascribe to the teachings of the Bible, you sure do like to use it a lot to advance your opinion.

As much as you run down Christianity, you often mention your grandfather and I recall a remark that you made saying he was an intelligent man, but you totally bust on him for his Christian beliefs and make Christianity out to be some evil conspiracy against women.

I can't help but wonder what someone claiming to be a Christian did or said to you to make you spout such a rampant derision of basic Christian doctrine, when what you don't seem to get is that it's people that make bad stuff happen; people make horrible, evil decisions every day that make this world a horrible evil place, but somehow or other YOU have to make these happenings part of some sexist conspiracy that is somehow founded on Christian beliefs.

I've perused websites and news outlets that point out it's more often Chinese, Indian, and the Middle Eastern cultures that murder their girl children, mostly in the name of favoring a boy child to carry on the family name or to save the family a bride price, cultures that are predominantly NOT Christian, so I'm at a complete loss as to how you continually make this connection.

I know there are a lot of people praying for you, Ann, myself included and I must just continue to hope that whatever malady has you on this obsessive bent will eventually be relieved, because it's completely pitiful to come to this site and find it displayed over and over again.

God bless Ann.


TEEEEEEEJ

OK, now I am not religious, and most of what I learned about the Bible and religious teachings in my youth has been forgotten. So if I step on someone's toes here, please forgive me.

The events as related in the Bible took place thousands and thousands of years ago. They were passed along from generation to generation before man developed an efficient means of writing them down physically. The society as described in the Bible was very different from Western society today, and there were no concerns about being politically correct. Women were treated like chattel because that's the way most men viewed them. We can debate now whether it was right or wrong, but that is simply the way it was, and nothing that we do or say can change it.

And although this is no longer the case in most Western societies, we know that in some parts of the world women are still considered to have less value than men. I don't argue with that, Ann, but despite the many posts you have made on this subject you have failed to convince me that this is a prevalent concern in Western society. And as to your perceived preference of boys over girls, I don't believe that people in the U.S. or Canada (I mention those since those are the two cultures I know best), for example, view baby girls less favorably than boys because they read about and were thus influenced by similar instances in the Bible.

Ann, you bring up various cases to prove your point, and I understand that you feel very strongly about this, but to me your viewpoint is skewed by your very strong bias about female oppression. Unless I see hard statistics drawn from a much broader spectrum that support your belief, I am unwilling to draw the same conclusions as you do from such a small sampling.

You cite 13 out of 15 abandoned/killed babies being girls, but that's just in the examples you've given. How many more out there are there over the past however many years? How many more instances - boys or girls - that you haven't researched? I have no idea, and I'm afraid that I'm unwilling to do any research on the subject, because I find the entire topic of abandoned/killed babies/children upsetting in the extreme, period, no matter what the gender of the child is. It may be the first piece of information that you seek out, but not me. I'm just horrified to hear of it happening, regardless of the circumstances. And I realize that I only know a microscopically small sample of Western society, but of everyone I know with children, those children are adored by their parents, be they male or female.

And to quote from one of the links that you yourself posted - BBC: Facts about female infanticide - it says:

Kathy

Kathy's right here you've only presented cases that you feel fit your theory and that isn't enough substantial evidence to prove your theory is correct. Here in Australia a toddler boy's body was found down a mine shaft and the father has been arrested charged with his murder. In fact I can tell you now that here the high profile child homicide cases have been predominately male. However, I will not jump to such a bias theory why? Because a few isolated cases aren't enough for me to draw any significant conclusions.

You also mentioned that it took you only 2 cases before you noticed a pattern that isn't enough to draw such a conclusion. To establish a definite pattern you'd have to pull out all child homicide cases and actually look at them first.

This doesn't prove that the baby was murdered it could have died from exposure or lack of food from not being found in time. There was a similar case in Western Australia where an abandoned baby was found dead at garbage dump and if memory serves correct it had been alive when it was left there.

As a Christian I refuse to believe that God is bias towards a certain gender. I don't understand where you can draw such a conclusion. Please remember that the Old Testament contains traditions that are thousands of years old. Traditions which today are generally not practiced especially in Christianity. Also you mention that you were raised on the Bible and that it seemed to you that the birth of a daughter was not desired. In those times perhaps it was true, but the Bible also has two books that are specifically about women Ruth and Esther. Esther would eventually be crowned queen. As for your theory that God would have stopped Jephthah from killing his son had it been his son that was the first to greet him as like Stephanie said he made that vow on his OWN. As for Abraham and why God stopped him it was meant to be a test of his devotion to God that he'd be willing to sacrifice the one thing that meant the world to him because God asked him to.

You are right, two cases don't make a pattern. But after two cases I got interested. After that I started paying very close attention every time a baby was found abandoned. What was the baby's gender? Was it a girl? As a matter of fact, yes, it was. It was a girl every time except once. Also there was a case when the sex of the baby wasn't disclosed, but as you may have guessed, I believe that it was a girl that time, too.

Let me say that it has been a pretty powerful experience to guess that an abandoned or killed baby is going to be a girl, and to be proved right every time except once. (And as for that one case, the mother stated for the record that she hadn't looked at the baby before she wrapped it in towels and plastic bags and put it in the freezer, but apart from that, this particular mother also stated that she preferred boys over girls anyway.)

Like I said, it has been a profound experience to expect, over and over again, that an abandoned baby is going to be a girl, and to be proved right every time except one. Naturally, when I heard about that case in Germany, where three babies were found in a freezer, I expected that those babies would prove to be girls, too. And when it was confirmed that they were indeed girls, I couldn't resist posting.

By the way, it has been a profound experience, too, to see that when the media have first reported about another abandoned infant, they have almost never disclosed the baby's gender right away. More often than not, it has taken days before they reported it, although you'd think they would know right away. Certainly the police would know right away. Why not tell us right away? Instead, they keep mum about it for days, leaving us to guess. And when they finally report it, the information is often to be found in fine print at the bottom of an article. Again and again, I have been wondering if the new case of an abandoned baby is another girl. I have of course guessed that it was a girl, and I have read everything I have found about the case, and then finally I have found confirmation. Yes, it was indeed a girl - again.

The new case in Germany was exactly like that, by the way. When the press first reported the case, nothing was said about the babies' gender. Why? Surely the police must have known? Surely the reporters could have asked? But no one asked and no one told. However, the dead babies were girls. Again.

Maybe all of this is coincidence. But you have to forgive me for not thinking so.

Oh, and yes, I was raised on the Bible. When I was six or seven years old, I read a children's version of the Bible over and over again. I couldn't help noticing that in the Old Testament there were stories about how boys and men were being saved - there was the story of how little Moses was saved, and how a man with leprosy was being healed by the prophet Elishah (hope I spelled that right in English - I don't have the energy to look it up) and how a dead boy was raised by the prophet Elijah, and how another dead boy was raised by the prophet Elishah. And there were all those women who rejoiced when they gave birth to sons: Hagar, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary. But there weren't any women who rejoiced when they gave birth to daughters. At least there was Jesus, who raised a girl from the dead, and who healed several women!

Anyway, did my reading of that kiddie Bible make me think that God didn't like girls as much as he liked boys? Yes, in fact, it did.

Ann

I think we should discern between two different topics here. First, there is the matter of infanticide and the ratio of girls to boys. Second, there is question if the bible is sexist.

Let's discuss - if we so desire - the infanticide matter here. And leave the bible out of it. Or start another topic on it. Anyway, I don't think we should mix topics here.

Oh, and by the way, I didn't take offense at you quoting an example from Germany. Not at all. After all, I was just as shocked as you were when I read about it. I didn't even expect someone might think I might take offense. But I do consider Germany my home ground, and I do indeed think that I understand what's going on here (in Germany) better than someone from another country. That's not meant to say that you don't have any right to say what you think, or that it has to be horribly wrong, but only that, sometimes, there are things you might (or might not) overlook.

Thank you for changing the topic title, Ann.

Tara

Ann, I'm afraid you might have misunderstood some of what I wrote earlier. I don't mean to imply that your interpretation of your reading of the Bible (either as a child or an adult) is wrong. I don't know the Bible well enough to make any kind of judgment.

But what I am trying to say is that you are viewing an ancient society through very modern eyes, and faulting it for not upholding to the moral standards of a modern Western society. And you can't do that. That society is gone. Unless new evidence is unearthed, we're not going to learn anything new and radically different about it. You know how long it has taken in many cultures for women to be treated equally to men - it obviously should be no surprise to you that thousands of years ago, women were not.

As far as God condoning or even encouraging the treatment of women that way, I don't think that he was. God does not micromanage events in peoples' lives. If so, then why would God let any of the terrible things happen - natural disasters, war, terrorism...

It was man - men with the sexist attitudes of the time - who lived the events as detailed in the Bible, and man who wrote them down.

Kathy

No, actually, that is not my point. I'm saying, or you could say that I'm guessing, that the Bible reflects a deeper, human way of reasoning. It could be that our modern Western society is the "natural" human society, but then again, it could be that our society is just the foam on top of a wave. It could disappear before we know it, and a society whose morality is more like the Biblical one could be the one to replace it.

Why were the people of the Old Testament sexist? Is it because they were radically different than we are? I doubt it. I think that they were basically just like us. And like Jen pointed out, even in the Old Testament people were not all sexist. There are strong women in the Old Testament, like Deborah, and there is at least one wonderfully warm and unconventional woman in the Old Testament, Ruth. And there were probably others like her. But the society as a whole was mostly sexist, and sometimes very sexist.

Most societies are like that, as a matter of fact. Not everyone or everything in them is sexist. But the societies as a whole are.

The reason why I speak so much of the Bible is twofold. I believe that the major religions of the world reflect who and what we are as human beings. I don't mean that all human beings are the same. I'm not trying to say to any of you that you are sexists. But, yes, I believe that societies are different from individual people, and I think that it may be true that practically all human societies tend to become sexist. If all major religions are sexist, and I believe that they are, then that strongly suggests to me that the human societies that produced them are sexist. When that sexism becomes so strong that it begins to kill women, either through condoning outright murder of women or girls, or through condoning serious neglect of young girls or women, then that becomes a hugely serious issue for me.

I think that our modern societies re-use at least parts of the "group morality" of those ancient societies which wrote down the Bible. When some people say that every word in the Bible is holy, then they actually say that the most sexist passages of those ancient texts are holy, too. The sexism of thousands of years ago becomes holy today. And some of those people who extol every part of the Bible seem to ask for, no, demand respect for their own sexism. Those polygamist sects have a point when they say that the Bible never forbids polygamy. It doesn't, as a matter of fact. (Neither, however, does it recommend it or outright celebrate it.)

I'm not trying to talk about ancient cultures per se. I'm trying to talk about the morality and ethics we have today. Often attempts at equality and fair treatment of women are described, rather scornfully, as "political correctness". Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think it is quite common in the United States to be proud of the fact that you are not "politically correct".

So I'm trying to talk about what I might call an underlying readiness to accept sexist societies here and now and all over the world, and I think the major religions condone and "sanctify" that universal sexism with its deep historical roots.

And I believe that the ultimate expression of sexism is the elimination of women. Interestingly, societies are never going to allow the complete elimination of women, because societies need women. But families in sexist societies don't necessarily feel the need to have daughters. Hence female infanticide.

Ann

Yes, Ann, I apparently misunderstood you, so I apologize for stressing a point that apparently you were not trying to make.

Kathy

Yesterday ActionAid published a new report about how girls are disappearing in India. I found an article about it on a page from expressindia.com. Here are a few quotes from the article:

The article can be found here.

Ann