Statistically, women should be a majority. In countries like the United States, women comprise over 51% of the population. But in other countries, countries where it is considered culturally acceptable to selectively abort fetuses based on their gender, women represent a far smaller segment of the population.
160 million women are missing from Asia alone. As author Mara Hvistendahl points out, that's half the size of the population of the entire United States, gone. Most of them were aborted after an ultrasound was able to determine gender. And imbalanced gender ratios have spread from Asia to other countries including Vietnam, Albania, and Azerbaijan.
One unfortunate side effect of giving women control over their own bodies is that they won't always make the "right" choice, according to us (obviously it IS the right choice if you ask many people in Asia). Safe, medical abortions, performed in a clinical setting by a trained medical professional are a tool. And just like any tool, the potential for abuse is always there.
Gender-based abortion is such a powerful tool, in fact, that "by 2020 an estimated 15 to 20 percent of men in northwest India will lack female counterparts." The only bright side I can see there is that maybe the remaining women, as a limited resource, will become more valuable. It hurts to apply fundamental economic theory to something like the lives of unborn women, but there you go.
Few would argue that in overcrowded parts of the world like India, women should give birth to more babies. The global population explosion is out of control and reaching critical mass for issues like food distribution and climate effects. And yet, only cutting back on the birth rate of baby girls seems tremendously unfair.
Consider, though, the fate of baby girls in a world before clinical abortion became safe and readily available. Baby girls were traditionally drowned or left out to die of starvation. This latest medical revolution has just brought the practice of female infanticide into the light of day. Why not be frank? People have been killing baby girls for a long time. It's just that now, it happens a lot sooner. Is that more humane? I guess it depends on who you ask.
Others have pointed out that in female-unfriendly parts of the world, selective gender abortion greatly eases population problems. To quote the article, "Couples with only female children 'keep trying' in hope of a son."
This is a difficult issue, and I don't have the answers. But like so many things, it's a lot more complex than it seems on the surface. A level of nuance that many commentators seem to overlook.