This study found that thirty-nine thousand baby girls die annually in China because parents don’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys receive—and that is just in the first year of life. One Chinese family-planning official, Li Honggui, explained it this way: “If a boy gets sick, the parents may send him to the hospital at once. But if a girl gets sick, the parents may say to themselves, ‘Well, let’s see how she is tomorrow.’” The result is that as many infant girls die unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died in the one incident at Tiananmen.
