Missing Children

Missing Children

60 Million Girls Missing in Asia

Yes, 60 million!

“According the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC)

* 85% to 90% of the 876,213 persons reported missing to America’s law enforcement agencies in 2000 were juveniles (persons under 18 years of age). That means that 2,100 times per day parents or primary care givers felt the disappearance was serious enough to call law enforcement.
* 152,265 of the persons reported missing in 2000 were categorized as either endangered or involuntary.
* The number of missing persons reported to law enforcement has increased from 154, 341 in 1982 to 876,213 in 2000. That is an increase of 468%.” (Statistics from, http://www.klaaskids.org/pg-mc-mcstatistics.htm).

Alarming statistics to be sure but they do not come close to an accurate accounting of the true number of missing kids in the world. June 13, 2007 Fox News ran a shocking story. The headline read: “Infanticide, Abortion Responsible for 60 Million Girls Missing in Asia” Sherry Karabin is the author of the column.

"According to a recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population Report, these practices, combined with neglect, have resulted in at least 60 million “missing” girls in Asia, creating gender imbalances and other serious problems that experts say will have far reaching consequences for years to come."

“Twenty-five million men in China currently can’t find brides because there is a shortage of women,” said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C. “The young men emigrate overseas to find brides.”

"The imbalances are also giving rise to a commercial sex trade; the 2005 report states that up to 800,000 people being trafficked across borders each year, and as many as 80 percent are women and girls, most of whom are exploited.”

/**/ “Women are trafficked from North Korea, Burma and Vietnam and sold into sexual slavery or to the highest bidder,” Mosher said.



Surprisingly, even the United Nations admits that Infanticide and Abortion are responsible for at least 60 million “missing” girls in Asia. The UN report points out a couple of the implications of these “missing girls.” What are the “serious problems” of infanticide and abortion? The result of killing girls is that now there is a “gender imbalance” in Asia resulting in “25 million men in China who cannot find a wife.” The story gets darker as the commercial sex trade is growing by leaps and bounds.



Perceptively, Mosher recognizes that part of the problem can be traced back to “Beijing’s one-child policy, which took effect in 1979. The policy encourages late marrying and late childbearing, and it limits the majority of urban couples to having one child and most of those living in rural areas to two. Female infanticide was the result, he said.

“Historically infanticide was something that was practiced in poor places in China,” Mosher said. “But when the one-child policy came into effect we began to see in the wealthy areas of China, what had never been done before in history — the killing of little girls.”



Mosher identifies exactly what is being done when he calls infanticide and abortion of females “the killing of little girls.”



That statement alone could go a long way to opening the eyes of our own country that increasingly is identified as a “culture of death.” When President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire” he clarified the issue. He dared to recognize evil. That statement alone is credited with beginning the process of undermining the Soviet Union. Infanticide and abortion are indeed the killing of human life. Though they may not often be defined these days as murder by national laws the Bible proclaims, “Thou shalt not murder.”

The law of God still points out sin. It convicts the sinner. Though the law cannot save it certainly reveals the need for a Savior. The Savior that the law requires is one who is both fully God and fully man. The one and only Savior is Jesus Christ the Lord. However, it is just those sort of direct and exclusive statements that is rejected in our culture.



Words are powerful. The double talk and fuzzy speech of those who exalt a woman’s right to choose only cloud the issue. People like Reagan and Mosher and the Bible believing Pastor down the road clarify the issue by calling infanticide and abortion “killing.”



But there is another issue that is a problem. This problem exists in the hearts of folks who would never consider infanticide or abortion or kidnapping but who nevertheless are contributing to the problem of missing children. These folks have adopted the policy of Beijing that encourages late marrying and late child-bearing. Whereas the Bible refers to children as a blessing from God so many in our culture see children as an inconvenience to a life filled with materialistic pursuits. This problem is not only a problem in the culture at large but even among professing Christians who advocate extending adolescence, delaying marriage and therefore delaying child-bearing.



How many missing children are there in the United States? The number is far beyond the FBI statistics.

Herbert S. Klein, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes in regard to the changes in the American family:

"All of these changes are having an impact on U.S. fertility rates. Not only is formal marriage no longer the exclusive arbiter of fertility, but more and more women are reducing the number of children they have. This is not due to women forgoing children. In fact, there has been little change in the number of women going childless, which has remained quite steady for the past 40 years. This decline in fertility is due to the fact that women are deliberately deciding to have fewer children. They are marrying later, thus reducing their marital fertility, they are beginning childbearing at ever later ages, they are spacing their children farther apart, and they are terminating their fertility at earlier ages. Not only did the average age of mothers having their first children rise by 2.7 years from 1960 to 1999, but it rose significantly for every subsequent child being born as well, while the spacing between children also increased. Although the average age of mothers at first birth for the entire population was now 24.9 years, for non-Hispanic white women it was 25.9 years.

Clearly the American family, like all families in the Western industrial countries, is now profoundly different from what it had been in the recorded past. It typically is a household with few children, with both parents working, and with mothers producing their children at ever older ages. At the same time, more adults than ever before are living alone or with unmarried companions and more women than ever before are giving birth out of wedlock. These trends have profoundly changed the American family and are unlikely to be reversed any time soon" (from The Hoover Digest 2004 No.3).

There is one way to reverse the trends. However it would require a biblical awakening. Such an awakening would result in embracing the following suppositions:

1. God is the Creator.

2. God commanded that married couples “be fruitful and multiply.”

3. God forbids murder.

4. Marriage is a good gift from God.

5. Children are to be received as a blessing from God.

6. Husbands are to love their wives by nurturing, protecting, providing for them.

7. Wives are to submit to and respect their own husbands.

8. Women are to value the call to homemaking above that of career making.

9. Parents are to take time to teach their children about God.

10. Children are to learn how to honor their parents.

11. All of the above require looking to Jesus Christ alone for spiritual life and wisdom.



When these 11 truths are not embraced then we can expect a devaluing of God, of His institutions and therefore a myriad of implications that include missing children, abortion, infanticide, sex trafficking, fewer people to marry but most of all the guilt of living with little regard for the God who created us.

Ray Rhodes, Jr. is President of Nourished in the Word Ministries and Pastor of Grace Community Church in Dawsonville, GA. To schedule Ray to speak at your next church, school, or community event then please contact him at ray@nourishedintheword.org. You can read more of Ray’s writings at www.nourishedintheword.org Ray is a frequent speaker at Family Conferences throughout the Southeast. Lori is a frequent speaker at ladies events and a devoted blogger. You can read Lori’s writings at www.nitw4ladies.blogspot.com