WASHINGTON (EWTN NEWS) — A bipartisan group of congressmen joined several human-rights groups on June 1 to lament the major absence of girls in the youngest generations of China. They blamed the imbalance on “gendercide” and sex-selective abortion.

“In China, the brutal reality is that no unborn girl is safe as long as forced abortion remains an integral part of the government’s vicious population control agenda,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. “Government population-control cadres kidnap pregnant women and forcibly destroy their babies, impervious to the anguished pleas and sobs of the mother.”

He said that gendercide has “exploded” since 1979, when the United Nations Population Fund and the Chinese government launched the one-child policy.

Smith spoke at a press conference with the organizations Amnesty International and All Girls Allowed. Demographers from the American Enterprise Institute and Texas A&M University spoke of the alarming lack of girls.

In some areas of China, only 100 girls are born for every 170 boys. Tens of millions of Chinese men will be unable to find wives. India faces similar problems.

Such imbalances will encourage sex trafficking and child-bride trafficking.

“Both India and China can and must do more at all levels of society — in the family and community, as well as at the government level — by enacting just and humane laws to ensure that every girl’s right to life, from the moment of conception, and her well-being are protected and nurtured,” Smith added.

Attending the conference were Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., Joe Pitts, R-Pa., and Frank Wolff, R-Va.