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friends who housed and guided me
in various cities around the world: Mr. and Mrs. Shiv Suri in Delhi, Nana Eun-A Seo in Seoul, Amanda Hong in Taipei, Tracey Suen in London, Zac Wyman in Paris, Dayna and Ember Frank and Angela Kim in Los Angeles, James Luke David in San Francisco, and Megan Shank and Adam Feeney in New York.
    Friends—and sometimes friends of friends—introduced me to sources and helped set up interviews: Jennifer Cheng, Yoonhee Cho, Gia Dinh, Karen Hyun, Christian Laudet, and Shravya K. Reddy. Ahead of my trip to South Korea I turned to Soyeon Gun, who translated my emails and made calls on my behalf. Arriving in Seoul, I relied on the expert translation of Ashley Sunya Yoon.
    The writing process would have been a lot less fun without that motley club of book lovers from Sam Freedman’s superb book seminar at Columbia School of Journalism: Gal Beckerman, David Biello, Shoshana Guy, Allan Jalon, and Kavitha Rajagopalan. Thanks to Sam for teaching me how to craft a proposal and for giving advice as I took a first stab at one. And thanks to Paul Hendrickson at the University of Pennsylvania for teaching me how to write—and observe—before that.
    Two chapters of the book grew out of a late-night conversation with Adam Minter. A mentor and a close friend, Adam urged me not to shy away from difficult topics—and provided a fine example in his own reporting on China.
    Also instrumental was the fiercely intelligent Laurel Kilgour. From suggesting bioethics readings to connecting me with potential sources to sending meticulous line-by-line edits on a draft, she was singularly helpful. I lucked out in the cousin department.
    And I am grateful to the various friends and family members who related their experiences of pregnancy, abortion, IVF, and egg donation or let me sit in on intimate ultrasound exams and doctors’ appointments. You know who you are.
    Others who contributed ideas or otherwise helped along the way include Parisa Yousef Dorst, Isaac Stone Fish, Ken Kostel, Hien Le, Renee Reynolds, Dawn Stover, and Jiyoung Yoon.
    This is a book about family, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own. Jake Hvistendahl, my brother, and Barrs Lang, my near-brother, taught me about sex ratio imbalance before anyone else. (In our household
generalizations about testosterone didn’t always hold true, and it was often I who terrorized them.) In addition to being a loving guardian for a few important years of my life, Hongyu Lang gave me my first Chinese lessons. My father was the original reporter and has always encouraged me in my work. Yet another generation back, I owe a lot to the feisty Joan Danielson and to the minister-turned-novelist Dave Danielson, for showing me how to seize life and love writing (two often contradictory acts), and to English professor Marion Hvistendahl, for teaching me about both the rules and wonders of language early on.
    Most of all I thank Aksel Çoruh, for providing balance—both gender and the other sort—in my own life, and for being the double in my happiness.

INDEX

    Abandoned girls in India
    Abortion
    in Albania
    in Asia/Eastern Europe typically married women with children
    Asian women’s attitudes towards
    in China
    coercive
    William Draper and push for global abortion rights
    Eastern religious/cultural prohibitions on
    as explanation for sex ratio imbalance
    frowned on in 1950s Asia
    health risks of multiple late-term
    high rate among Asian Americans
    increased rate in late 1960s, early 1970s
    legalization in Asia/Eastern Europe
    preserving right to/criticizing sex selection
    in South Korea
    still prohibited in a quarter of world
    stressing of over other methods
    tool/not right in world population control
    Abortion, sex selective
    after already have daughters/for later pregnancies
    in Albania
    brings in money for doctors
    can be empowering for woman
    coercive abortions in past now make it easier
    crackdown on and Care for