Infanticide In China Essay Research Paper Killing

Infanticide In China Essay, Research Paper

Killing your baby, what could be more depraved. For a woman to destroy the fruit of herwomb would seem like an ultimate violation of the natural order. But every year,hundreds of women commit neonaticide: they kill their newborns or let them die. Most

neonaticides remain undiscovered, but every once in a while a janitor follows a trail ofblood to a tiny body in a trash bin, or a woman faints and doctors find the remains of aplacenta inside her. In China, babies are often abondoned near orphanages and found decaying along the streets. The Chinese government established population controls that increased the pressure on families to limit reproduction and the religious establishment has failed to take an active role in discouraging neonaticide.

Religion in China is influenced by three major schools of thought: Taoism,Confucianism and Buddhism. While Confucianism is a major philosophy and Buddhism originated in India, Taoism is truly a Chinese religion. Regardless of their origin, all three major religions are ancient and when practiced today are deeply intertwined in China’s communist ideology. Taoism and Confucianism have co-existed throughout history and are usually practiced together either at different times or as different aspects of the follower’s overall life. While Confucianism largely concerns human society, sociarelations and individual conduct; Taoism is more individual and mystic and is greatly influenced by nature. Buddhism, with an estimated 300 million followers worldwide, is a major world religion which focuses on individual enlightenment. Buddhism also teaches reincarnation – the doctrine that the soul returns in another body – and some Chinese Taoist cults teach physical immortality, but none involves resurrection.

Personhood is both a central problem Buddhist ethics, consequently a very promising area for a dialogue. The problem for Buddhist ethics has always been why should people act ethically if there is no act, no actor and no consequences of action. If there is no self or other, how can there be karmic consequences, responsibility, loyalty, or even compassion. Scholars continue to be divided over whether Buddhism suggests different ethics for those who persist in the illusion of self (kammic ethics) and for those who would transcend the illusion of self (nibbanic ethics). The paradoxical unity of compassionate ethics and nihilistic insight into selflessness has been the central koan of Mahaayaana Buddhism. Tantra and Zen suggest that the person who sees that there is no “I” is beyond good and evil. The Theravaadin commentator Buddhaghosa appears to have combined all three views. He held that killing produces karma jointly through the mental effort and intensity of the desire to kill, and the virtue of the victim.1 Since killing big animals required more effort, and was therefore worse than killing small animals, the karma of feticide would be less than murder of adults, and less in earlier stages of pregnancy. None of the religious followings has made a definitve statement against feticide, or presented any spiritual punishment for the act, aside from the karma of feticide which would be negligable.

Neonaticide has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history. In a 1970 study of statistics of child killing, Phillip Resnick, a psychiatrist, found that mothers who kill their older children are frequently psychotic, depressed or suicidal, but

mothers who kill their newborns are usually not. This difference led Resnick to argue that the category infanticide be split into neonaticide, the killing of a baby on the day of its birth, and filicide, the killing of a child older than one day. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, both psychologists, argue that a capacity for neonaticide is built into the biological design of our parental emotions. Mammals are extreme among animals in the amount of time, energy and food they invest in their young, and humans are extreme

among mammals. Parental investment is a limited resource, and mammalian mothers must ”decide” whether to allot it to their newborn or to their current and future offspring. In most cultures, neonaticide is a form of this triage. If a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising, they may cut their losses and favor the healthiest in the litter or try again later on. Until very recently in human evolutionary history, mothers nursed their children for two to four years before becoming fertile again. Many children died,

especially in the perilous first year. While the limited availability of resources is one factor that is responsible for the infanticide in China, there is a unmistakeable gender preference which results in a higher number of female infants killed over males.

China’s approach to population control has undergone major changes over the past several decades. In 1949 at the time of the Communist takeover, there were an estimated 540 million Chinese people. Chairman Mao in 1965 believed that population growth was a good thing because “every stomach comes with two hands attached”. At

that time China’s birth rate was 37 per 1000. By 1976 population had risen to 852 million. The causes of this rapid growth were a drop in infant mortality rates and the longer life spans which had been achieved in the 1950’s. By the 1970’s it was becoming evident to the Chi