As a commercial pilot certified to carry a gun while he flies, Paul Valone has had training on how to use a firearm to neutralize mass shooters and thwart terrorists.

It’s not with glee that the North Carolinian had to learn how to unjam a gun with one hand or manage it blindfolded. Rather he sees his skills acquisition as a civic duty, at a time when he says values are fraying in American life – underscored by the latest shooting to shock the nation: seven people shot dead at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. It happened less than six weeks after 19 elementary school students and two teachers were shot dead in May in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas.

Like 63% of American gun owners polled by Gallup in 2019, Mr. Valone carries a weapon for self-protection – relying on himself to keep his family and friends safe.

“Weapons shouldn’t be comfortable. They should be comforting,” says Mr. Valone, a federal flight deck officer and president of Grass Roots North Carolina, a gun rights group. “Any place I can be legally armed, you can rest assured I will be.”

Mr. Valone is part of an undeniable trend: A country filled with disquiet is holding its guns close. Each mass shooting reignites a long-standing fight for more gun control – and a sense of disbelief around the world that anyone would see another solution. But Americans have tended to seek out more guns for protection, not fewer to try to end the violence.

“Too many guns are purchased in our society because people don’t trust their fellow Americans,” says U.S. historian Randolph Roth, author of “American Homicide.”

Around the world, the question of who national societies trust most when it comes to guns and public safety rarely follows the U.S. example of prioritizing individual discretion with weapons.

In countries from Norway to New Zealand, the United Kingdom to Canada, where mass shootings have shocked nations, publics have put their trust in the authority of democratic governments. In Switzerland, which has one of the highest per capita rates of gun ownership in the world, citizens rely on one another – not just themselves – to maintain a healthy culture of gun safety, centered around a common good.

And in Latin America, a region among the most violent in the world and where trust of institutions and one another is much lower than in the U.S., a mentality of arming oneself doesn’t emerge, in no small part because of doubts about the example the United States has set.

Whatever the locale, trust remains a key factor in determining how a nation responds to guns. Exploring the levels of trust – in institutions and in each other – helps explain some of the gaping disconnect between the U.S. and the rest of the world when it comes to mass shootings.

Avoiding “the American road”

The Scottish voices in the video message are sober. “We want you to know that change can happen,” they say. “It won’t be easy, but continue to remind everyone of exactly what happened at your school and of the devastation caused by just one person with one legally owned gun. Never let anyone forget.”

They are the survivors of a shooting in Dunblane, Scotland, 22 years prior, addressing student survivors of the attack on a Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018, when a gunman murdered 17 people.

After the mostly 9-, 10-, and 11-year-olds were killed in Uvalde, Texas, the message of activists who managed to change British gun laws after Dunblane remains unchanged. “Be brave. Be ambitious,” says Gill Marshall-Andrews, chair of the Gun Control Network, which was formed out of a civil society movement after the massacre.

AP/File

This undated photo shows the class of Dunblane Primary School, Scotland, and their teacher, Gwen Mayor. After 16 children and Ms. Mayor were killed by a gunman on March 13, 1996, the United Kingdom banned handguns. The country hasn't had a school shooting since.

The American gun debate has always stood out, not just because of its proportions but also its composition. Since its frontier founding, gun laws are protected under the U.S. Constitution, and the National Rifle Association is singular when compared with other gun lobbies globally in its power to protect those rights.

Yet gun control is polarizing everywhere, and public trust has had to be earned. It was so divisive in the United Kingdom in 1996 that campaigners received death threats. “In 1996 pistol shooting was the fastest growing sport in the U.K., and we were told there couldn’t possibly be a ban on handguns because of that. We were told this was all too ambitious,” says Ms. Marshall-Andrews. “But we managed to get a complete ban. It’s totally transformed the culture of guns in this country. We were going down the American road.”

That was a quarter century ago. There have been only three mass shootings, and not a single school shooting, in the U.K. since. In the U.S., figures by Jaclyn Schildkraut for the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium show 402 mass shootings in the U.S. between 1966 and 2020, the numbers steadily rising with each decade. They do not include gang violence or terrorist attacks in their tally.

When societies have been faced with the kind of tragedies that come with stories like that of Aiden McCarthy, the toddler found wandering alone at Highland Park on July 4 after both his parents were shot dead, most have moved legislatively – and effectively – to prevent a repeat.

Australia pushed through a gun buyback program after the 1996 massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Research from the University of Sydney shows the proportion of Australians who hold a gun license fell by 48% between 1997 and 2020. New Zealand banned semiautomatic rifles less than a week after a far-right extremist killed 51 members of a mosque in 2019.

Canada tightened its gun laws after a 1989 mass shooting of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. And while the U.S. last month did see passage of its first major gun safety legislation in a quarter century in response to the Uvalde school shooting, boosting so-called red flag laws and bolstering background checks for those under 21, it was the U.S.’s neighbor to the north that moved more radically. Within a week of Uvalde, Canada introduced new legislation to freeze buying, importing, and selling handguns.

“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press/AP

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces new gun control legislation in Ottawa on May 30, 2022, in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

“A gun isn’t going to help them”

South of the U.S. border, Mexico is awash in guns and violence. Americans see images of daylight shootouts in public squares or quinceañeras – the kind of barbarity that can seem like a Hollywood production.

But along the broad sidewalks outside the Benito Juárez elementary school in central Mexico City, one thing Fernando Rendon doesn’t worry about is a mass shooting inside his 8-year-old son’s classroom.

“It’s just not that easy to get a gun,” says the father, as families schlep backpacks festooned with cartoon characters at school dismissal and kids eat bright-pink strawberry popsicles on their walks home.

There have been three school shootings in Mexico since 2014. But the subsequent national conversation in Mexico after their recent school shootings, including one in 2020, has focused on the erosion of family values, mental health, and the corrupting nature of violent video games. Access to guns is rarely mentioned. That’s in part because it’s so hard to legally obtain one in the first place, leaving weapons to circulate mostly among criminals.

But amid such high rates of violence, in a culture that focuses on family and community, and given its trajectory of gun laws, a mentality of arming oneself – the values Mr. Valone espouses, for example – doesn’t take root.

“I think a lot of people calculate a gun isn’t going to help them” in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, says Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy organization. “Gangs are either really well armed or control the local police – or control everything in a neighborhood. If you kill one [gang member], even in self-defense, you’re in even greater danger,” he says.

Today, Mexico has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the hemisphere, which makes legally obtaining a firearm a lengthy – and pricey – endeavor. There are about 16.8 million firearms in civilian hands in Mexico, roughly 4% the total number of guns in the U.S., according to the Small Arms Survey based in Switzerland.

And from the southern vantage, Mexicans have a clear view on vicious cycles of armament – and how American gun laws make their security worse. In 2004, the U.S. ban on assault weapons expired, and almost immediately the homicide rate shot up in Mexico. one study showed that, between 2014 and 2018, 70% of guns traced in Mexico came from the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Last year, the Mexican government filed a historic suit against a handful of U.S.-based gun manufacturers for what they see as their role in the steady flow of arms that cross into Mexico from the U.S. each year.

Some politicians in the region have tried to loosen gun laws to deal with their own violence. In the past year, politicians on the right in Chile, Brazil, and Colombia have put forth proposals that lean into individual rights to bear arms and access weapons. In 2016 a proposal was floated in the Mexican Senate to allow guns to be carried in cars and private companies but was roundly rejected.

Eugenio Weigend Vargas, the director for Gun Violence Prevention at the Center for American Progress, researches gun violence and trafficking in the U.S. and Mexico. He says some politicians in Latin America may be “repeating the narrative you hear in the U.S.” around gun rights, but “the overall perception is that people look at the U.S. and say ‘I don’t want to be like that.’”

In Mexico, amid corruption scandals and allegations that police and military officers are often co-opted by the drug trade, trust of authorities is low. Only 25% of Mexicans say they trust the police. That leads to low interpersonal trust. According to Inter-American Development Bank research, only 12.4% of Mexicans agree with the statement “Most people can be trusted.” That compares with 39.6% in the U.S. and 49.3% in Switzerland.

“Mexico is a weak state, and that means that in many cases, individual citizens and communities are left to defend themselves,” says David Shirk, an expert in organized crime and violence in Mexico at the University of San Diego.

Usually that means additional security – from tall walls constructed outside houses, to private security details and armored cars for wealthly people, to moving your family from one neighborhood to another – or even fleeing the country. “It underscores to me that people realize having a gun is not going to make you safer,” says Mr. Shirk.

Outside the Benito Juárez school, first grade teacher Veronica, who doesn’t give her last name because she wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, says her institution carried out an informal poll on whether or not to check backpacks for weapons following the Uvalde shooting. But such checks have raised human rights concerns in Mexico, and she says she doesn’t expect a new policy to go into place, as she adjusts her hot-pink-framed glasses after school. “They don’t have access to guns, so I don’t really think about that.”

Eduardo Verdugo/AP/File

Workers repair the bullet-riddled facade of City Hall in Villa Union, Mexico, Dec. 2, 2019. Though criminal violence is common in Mexico, few Mexicans see private gun ownership as a safe response. “Gangs are either really well armed or control the local police – or control everything in a neighborhood. If you kill one [gang member], even in self-defense, you’re in even greater danger,” says Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.

Communal responsibility

Swiss youth, on the other hand, have easier access to guns.

On a sweltering June weekend, men, boys, and families gathered at Switzerland’s Federal Field Shooting contest, held at sites across the country and billed by organizers as the world’s largest shooting competition, with roots dating back to 1872.

At one of the competition’s sites outside Basel, participants as young as 14 gathered for the mid-June annual festival, some in full folkloric costume or military attire despite the heat. In a nation with a standing militia, where military service is compulsory for all men, the gun has a long tradition here. And while it symbolizes death and divisive politics in many places in the world, guns reflect for many here a national ideal – and fun.

Elia Sammarruco, a 20-year-old participant, compares shooting to meditation after one of his events, stressing he prefers real shooting to the virtual version in video games. “It’s just you, the gun, and the target,” he explains. “So I can leave all my thoughts and just focus. ... Gaming sometimes can be really stressful and hectic and fast. Here it is slow. You take your time.”

Switzerland counts 2,500 shooting clubs nationwide. With about 130,000 members, the Swiss Shooting Association is the largest sports club in the country. Local communal ranges like this one outside Basel are a feature of Swiss life, like hockey rinks in Canada or baseball diamonds in the U.S.

“It’s a wonderful tradition,” says Steven Bleuler, a member of the Schiess-Sport Helvetia Basel club. “I can go shooting with my grandfather, with my father, with my brother ... [and] if I had children of the right age they could come shooting.”

Switzerland hasn’t been spared mass shootings. A 2001 attack in the canton of Zug, when a gunman stormed the parliamentary chamber and killed 14, shook the nation. It helped usher in greater restrictions that have tightened over the years, including ones imposed by the European Union after the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. But guns, and the restriction of them, have not become a major wedge issue in part because citizens get to weigh in on such regulations in referendums.

The Swiss have found consensus on the issue – putting trust in each other and the rules they have agreed upon to keep guns safe.

Sandro Klotter teaches seven young shooters in the nearby town of Arlesheim. They all had to master handgun expert Jeff Cooper’s four safety rules – consider every gun loaded, don’t aim at something you don’t want to hit, keep your trigger finger straight, be aware of your target and what’s around it – before getting a weapon.

“My guys, they don’t get a gun unless they can recite that,” he says. “I must be sure that I can call them at 3 o’clock in the morning and ask them what is safety rule No. 3? Safety is No. 1.”

The shooting community knows avoiding accidents is key to keeping their treasured tradition going – and avoiding tighter regulations. “There is really a trust from the government towards us that we are responsible with the rifles and the guns,” says Mr. Bleuler. “Us shooters look all the time at security. Security is all the time in focus. We don’t want an accident to happen.”

Switzerland has on average about 50 homicides per year. Including attempted murders, guns were used only in 10% of the cases in 2019, according to Swiss federal statistics. In the U.S., where figures leave out attempted homicides, 67% of murders involved a gun that year, says Marcelo Aebi, professor of criminology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

“One key difference between Switzerland and the United States is that military service is mandatory for men,” he says. “That means every man considered to be sound of mind and physically able receives training on gun safety.

While the option of purchasing one’s weapon after completing service and taking it home was once the norm, those who do are today a tiny minority, Dr. Aebi adds. In 2004, 43% of people serving were purchasing their service arms. That represented 20,000 assault rifles and 20,000 pistols. By 2017, in a county of 8.5 million, only 10% bought their weapons.

Dr. Aebi says a lower level of polarization allows the gun culture consensus to remain. “There has been a gradual polarization of societies everywhere, but this polarization is particularly important in the United States. This polarization that exists means that you do not trust people that do not think like you,” he says.

Switzerland, on the other hand, has a long history of neutrality and democracy, as well as a depersonalized style of politics since it is governed by a council of seven ministers who take turns serving as president. “[In Switzerland,] trust in institutions is high, and interpersonal confidence too.”

Dominique Soguel

Gun security experts coach participants in the Federal Field Shooting contest in Basel, Switzerland, which is open to shooters with and without experience. The Swiss have found consensus on gun control – putting trust in each other and the rules they have agreed upon to keep guns safe.

Trust and violence

The interplay between trust, safety, and guns is at the heart of research that Dr. Roth at Ohio State has carried out, from the colonial era to recent anti-police protests.

His basic finding: Low murder rates tend to correlate with periods when Americans have a strong level of trust in the government and in each other.

Over history, when people were best off, violence remained low. World War II brought peace around the world, including the U.S. Murder rates dropped. The turbulent ’60s and ’70s saw violence rise again, at different rates among different groups. Murder among white people rose in the Carter era, but fell in the Reagan years. The opposite was true for Black Americans. The homicide rate peaked in Los Angeles in 1992 – the year that the Rodney King riots stunned the nation. And then the murder rate went down.

Then there was the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; the Malheur protests in Oregon; the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and protests against the murder of George Floyd in 2020 – the anger bleeds into violence. At the same time, the murder rate rises.

The pandemic flamed new iterations of “them” versus “us,” and two years ago, the U.S. saw a record 23 million guns sold. This year has seen the highest number of mass shooting victims in history.

The new U.S. gun control law has been hailed as a significant step forward to lower the temperature – mostly because it’s at least a step. “We have not been able to pass anything significant in 30 years. The last gun laws were passed when I was 10,” says Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education, and politics at the center-left think tank Third Way.

That does not reflect the moderate position that most Americans hold. In new polling by Third Way in Washington after Uvalde, 73% of respondents in North Carolina said it was too easy to get a gun.

Mr. Valone is opposed to the new U.S. gun control law; he protested at the office of Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican who helped pen it. After Highland Park, he says further restrictions, from an assault weapons ban to trigger laws, wouldn’t have made a difference in this case.

Instead, he has dedicated tireless hours as an activist trying to build bipartisan support in his own state for improving mental health reporting for background checks. He also supports more federal funding for school security.

“Gun owners are saying, ‘What can we do?’ But our philosophy of what can we do is dramatically different than people who think they are going to disarm violent sociopaths,” says Mr. Valone. “And to deter a violent sociopath, you have to convince him that he’s likely to encounter an armed American who isn’t prepared that day to be a victim.”

The trick moving forward, says Ms. Erickson, is convincing gun rights activists like Mr. Valone that restrictions won’t make America less safe, and on the other hand, convincing the most ardent gun opponents that guns don’t need to be abolished.

“If we can show proof of concept that it works, then we can maybe talk about the next thing that we agree on. And I think it’s much more likely at this point that those kinds of conversations are going to happen in civil society than in Congress. I do think this moment of incremental progress could both restore trust that we can have a conversation about gun safety without talking about confiscating all guns,” she says, “and also that Congress can actually get something done.” 

Shafi Musaddique contributed reporting from London.

Henry Nicholls/Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces his resignation July 7, 2022, hours after pledging to “carry on” in his job. More than 50 senior lawmakers, including Cabinet ministers, resigned over the past two days.

Until the very last moment – flamboyantly self-confident that only he could fix what ailed his country and the world – he was determined to hold on to the highest office in the land.

But in the end, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson strode quietly to a plain wooden podium in front of No. 10 Downing St. and announced he was resigning and would leave office once a successor was in place.

No refusal to accept reality, no challenges to the legitimacy of his rejection by the party he led, no calls on his supporters to storm the houses of Parliament.

The differences between Mr. Johnson’s fall and Donald Trump’s conceivably temporary departure from the White House were not due to any fundamental differences between the two leaders. Indeed, supporters and opponents alike had been commenting on the two men’s similarities, their populist flair and fire and their apparent belief that previously accepted rules of conduct in public life simply didn’t apply to them.

What Mr. Johnson’s extraordinarily sudden exit demonstrated – hours after repeatedly, and publicly, insisting he was going nowhere – was the profound difference between the political and social cultures of the two allied democracies.

Put simply, most British people by far, and most members of Parliament, still believe the rules of public conduct do matter. As former Health Secretary Sajid Javid, one of the many ministers to have deserted Mr. Johnson in the past 48 hours, put it, “honesty and integrity” are important.

Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/AP

Britain's former Health Secretary Sajid Javid delivers a personal statement to the House of Commons in London July 6, 2022, following his resignation on Tuesday.

That, above all, is what spelled the end of his time in Downing Street.

That was in stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s abiding popularity and influence among Republican voters and politicians in the United States. There, unlike in Britain, a battlefield sense of politics divided into two implacably opposed armies seems to have left little space for the kind of broad, national debate on public behavior that forced Mr. Johnson from office.

And while some of the “culture war” language that has divided U.S. politics even more bitterly is making its way across the Atlantic, it has yet to gain similar traction in Britain.

The mechanics of Mr. Johnson’s demise were important. And there, too, the transatlantic differences are significant. Britain is a parliamentary system. The prime minister isn’t directly elected like an American president.

He holds office merely as leader of the dominant party in the House of Commons, and it is his party that will now choose the next prime minister.

The unavoidable problem Mr. Johnson faced in the end was that his own parliamentary colleagues deserted him – one by one at first, and then in a tidal wave that saw more than 50 ministers resign in two days.

They were not simply casting moral judgment on the prime minister. Like all politicians, they were guided by their own interests as well.

And they acted because of what Mr. Javid described as the forceful message they received from their constituents, a message of disenchantment, anger, and even disgust over a growing list of Mr. Johnson’s personal scandals and public untruths.

Disenchantment had been building since it became known Mr. Johnson and his staff had broken the strict pandemic lockdown rules they imposed on the rest of the country. But it reached a new level this week when it emerged that Mr. Johnson had promoted an MP despite knowing that he had been accused of inappropriate sexual advances toward young men, and incorrectly denying he was aware of this.

This week’s wholesale desertion by longtime political allies was all the more significant because many of the same social and political trends that elevated Mr. Trump to power have been taking root in Britain as well.

Evan Vucci/AP/File

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the United Nations in New York Sept. 24, 2019. The two men share many traits, but the ways in which they lost their jobs illustrate the differences between U.S. and British political cultures.

There’s been an erosion of trust in mainstream politicians, a feeling that is especially strong among voters in working-class communities in the north of England that are doing far less well economically than London and the south.

In the United States, a similar sentiment helped Mr. Trump to victory in the 2016 presidential election; in Britain it was critical to a victory for the campaign – led by Mr. Johnson – to withdraw from the European Union.

He then rode the Brexit cause to the prime ministership, and led the Conservatives to a landslide victory in 2019 under the slogan “get Brexit done.” Crucially, he wrested a number of parliamentary seats away from the opposition Labour Party in working-class areas in the north.

This week, however, his colleagues seemed to conclude that Brexit was no longer likely to prove sufficient to hold on to those gains at the next elections, and, more importantly, that Mr. Johnson was simply too tainted, and his personal appeal too damaged, to make the case to the voters.

Why? Honesty and integrity, as Mr. Javid said. And, as a Conservative MP told reporters once news broke that Mr. Johnson was leaving, another, related imperative: “the country’s trust.”

Courtesy of Satyajit Jadeja

Soon after his twin girls were born, Satyajit Jadeja started researching if there was a way to guarantee a boy next time. Just like the country needs a balanced sex ratio, so does his family, he argues.

When Satyajit Jadeja’s wife went into labor last December, the couple knew they were going to have twins, though their gender was still a mystery. The family was happy when Mr. Jadeja’s wife delivered two healthy baby girls, but one girl and one boy would have been ideal, he says. 

“It’s not that we are biased,” Mr. Jadeja quickly clarifies. “But when you think of the future, it is essential [to have a boy], because the girl goes [to another family] after marriage.” Sons, he says, act as a support system for aging parents.

A pervasive preference for sons has led India to have one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world, with approximately 108 men for every 100 women. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that India misses out on nearly 400,000 female births a year due to sex selection. The Indian government tried to end sex-selective abortions in 1994 by making it illegal to reveal the sex of a fetus, but the practice persists, and now the country’s booming and largely unregulated market of in vitro fertilization clinics is offering a new avenue for guaranteeing a son. 

Lawmakers have taken note, passing a bill in December to regulate assisted reproductive technology, including IVF. The act reiterates the 1994 ban on sex selection and prohibits IVF clinics from offering such services. Advocates for “family balancing” – a term some doctors use for selecting the sex of a baby through IVF – see this as an infringement on reproductive rights, while others see it as a step forward in the fight for gender equality. Either way, India’s poor track record on curbing sex selection reveals a need to address the underlying values that drive preference for a son. 

“We should address our patriarchy, our discriminatory system and culture,” says activist Varsha Deshpande, who’s been working to stop sex selection for more than two decades. 

Modern technology, archaic beliefs

Abortion of female fetuses – typically after bribing a doctor to determine the sex via ultrasound – remains the most common method of sex selection in India, but using IVF to have a son is increasingly popular.

When a couple gets pregnant through IVF, a preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) test is carried out to check the embryo for genetic disorders. But it also determines its sex. In many countries, including the United States, the test is routinely used for sex selection – parents can decide whether they want to have a male or female embryo implanted. In India, PGD for sex selection is illegal, but activists and authorities say it happens discreetly in IVF clinics across the country.

Arun Muthuvel, an IVF specialist in the southern Indian city of Chennai, says he gets at least 10 couples per month inquiring about PGD for sex selection – 90% of them want a son. “They literally beg: ‘We will not tell anybody, please do it,’” says Dr. Muthuvel.  

Some wealthy couples sidestep the laws altogether, getting their IVF treatment in countries like the United Arab Emirates and Thailand, where sex selection is legal. There are dozens of family balancing clinics – like one in Dubai aptly named Select My Baby – that advertise to Indian couples specifically. 

In Delhi, Satyajit Kumar heads a special government team to enforce the ban on sex selection. For the past few years, he’s asked local IVF centers to submit records of how many procedures they’ve done, along with patient details – if the couple are relatively young or their previous children are all girls, that’s a possible red flag. 

Dr. Kumar says the new act will help monitor IVF centers more actively, and his department has plans to set up a new division dedicated to assisted reproductive technology. “If you implement it in a very good manner, you will get a very good result,” Dr. Kumar says.

However, implementation is not easy in a country where abortion and IVF are both legal. 

Finding the root cause

“When it’s a collusion between the client and doctor, it’s very difficult to find out what is happening within the IVF lab or the sonography room,” says Ms. Deshpande, who describes sex selection as “medical terrorism.” 

Activists have to rely on sting operations, sending pregnant women with recording equipment as decoys to catch doctors or technicians red-handed. But it’s not enough. Indian officials themselves admit that India’s sex ratio has worsened since the 1994 law.

In addition to banning sex-selective abortions, the Indian government has launched numerous schemes over the past few decades promising cash incentives to families with girls. But experts say these too have largely failed to improve the sex ratio, undercutting a common myth that poverty is the major motivator for female feticide. The IVF trend – in which educated and relatively well-off families are opting for sons over daughters – also challenges this assumption. 

In reality, activists say, the son preference is a product of deeply patriarchal social norms and laws, which altogether can make even the most educated or equality-minded couples wish for a boy. 

Until recently, daughters didn’t have equal rights to inherit property. When a woman is raped, her entire family carries the stigma, while the male perpetrators often walk free. Studies show that, despite being outlawed, dowry payments are still common throughout India, and even when a woman gets married, elders pray she’ll be “blessed with eight sons.” Until these things change, Ms. Deshpande says no law will stop families from seeking out a son.

In the meantime, some are calling for compromise. 

Courtesy of Satyajit Jadeja

Satyajit Jadeja and his wife, who are new parents, believe that in special cases, families should be allowed to use IVF to select the sex of their baby. Mr. Jadeja says sons are important in Indian society because they act as a support system for aging parents.

The right to “balance”?

Dr. Muthuvel believes the conditional legalizing of sex selection would reduce unsafe abortions, and says a blanket ban on sex selection through IVF goes against the reproductive rights of parents who lack resources to travel to places like Dubai. “If people who have money can go [abroad] without any issue,” he says, “why can’t people in India do it?” 

That includes Sandeep, a father of two girls who asked to be identified only by his first name. He worries for his daughters’ safety and wishes they had a brother to protect them. Sandeep says he’d like to take his wife abroad for IVF treatment, but they don’t have the funds. 

“For the rest of my life I will [have] the small pain of not having a son,” he says.

Shortly after his twin girls were born, Mr. Jadeja started researching if there was any way to guarantee a boy next time. When he learned that using PGD for sex selection is illegal in India, the new father launched into a tweet storm. He’s sent dozens of messages to political leaders and the media demanding an amendment to allow sex selection in certain cases. “Couples with 2 or more children, all of same gender, should be permitted to have gender selection through IVF,” he argues in one post.

Though Mr. Jadeja realizes that most people would be using IVF to have boys, he says the risk of misuse isn’t an adequate reason to ban the practice altogether. “If the government says we can’t check misuse, that’s the government’s fault,” he says. 

Just like the country needs a balanced sex ratio, so does his family, he argues. 

But when asked if he’d still be looking to balance his family if he’d had twin sons instead of daughters, he pauses. “Honestly, [I] might not,” he says. 

When Mohammed Abu Saman, wounded by an Israeli sniper during a protest at Gaza’s border, was told that doctors must amputate his leg, his thoughts went to sports.

“The first thing that came to mind was: How can I ever play football again?” he recalls.

He had already gone through six months of medical interventions, even a trip to Turkey, to try to save his leg and avoid what he called “the inevitable.”

Soccer had been both a passion and an identity for the star goalkeeper for his team in the Gaza Strip’s Jabalia refugee camp, his main outlet while living under a stifling Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory.  

“I went to protest to call for my right of return to my homeland,” the 26-year-old says. “I never imagined I would end up disabled at a young age.”

After the amputation, he spiraled into depression, refusing to see friends or even leave the house. “I felt that I was useless, with no purpose in life,” he says.

Until one day two years ago, a friend came to his house and urged him to come to a picnic.

But rather than the seashore or an outdoor picnic spot, their destination was a soccer field. Mr. Abu Saman demanded to return home, but his friends insisted he enter. What he discovered became a turning point in his life: a soccer camp for amputee players.

“I was astonished to see amputees just like me, but they were playing and laughing in joy and fun,” says Mr. Abu Saman, who now darts and dashes across the pitch for the Al Salem team in North Gaza.

His experience is not unique. In the Gaza Strip, amputee football is gaining ground both as an outlet for healing and a showcase for Gazan athletes’ perseverance and skill in the face of staggering challenges.

In four years, the promotion of amputee football by the International Committee of the Red Cross has offered both a lifeline and an opportunity for the hundreds of Gazans who have lost limbs due to violent conflict. The program teaches a transformative lesson: Even if war interrupts life, passion and drive do not have to be a casualty; they can still flourish.

The local athletes’ perseverance and grit are on display at Gaza’s first-ever amputee football tournament this summer.

The tournament, which runs through July, includes five teams from across Gaza’s five governorates – Rafah, Khan Younis, Gaza City, Deir al Balah, and North Gaza – who are facing off in a series of matches organized by the Palestine Amputee Football Association and the ICRC.

It is the culmination of a program started by the ICRC in 2019 to provide amputee footballers training to adapt and improve their skills – and overcome fears.

“Football has become a lifeline for them, a field where they can find themselves,” Al Salem coach Tareq Hamada says during a match in a roofed fieldhouse in June.

Beneath the statistics and the win-loss column, though, the real progress officials chart in the tournament are players’ interactions, independence, and engagement.

Naman Abu Shamlla, deputy secretary-general of the Palestine Amputee Football Association, says the tournament is helping amputees integrate back into society – and take center stage, showcasing their abilities to their friends, families, and attendees.

“We feel proud of our players who play in highly competitive matches after long hours of training,” Mr. Abu Shamlla says on the sidelines of the match. “Their determination and perseverance are a true inspiration to younger generations.”

Finding a new drive

One such inspirational player is Ibrahim Madi, a 31-year-old star striker for the Al Salem Al Kheira team.

In the warmup to the match, he bounds with energy on the hardwood pitch. Within minutes of the match’s opening, he drives down the field and scores a goal.

Being called a “star player” was unthinkable three years ago when he was one of 155 young men and women who lost limbs from the Israeli military’s violent put-downs of a series of Right of Return rallies from March 2018 to March 2019 at the Gaza border, as documented by the World Health Organization and Israeli NGO B’Tselem.

Abdallah al-Naami

A coach gives instructions to his Al Jazeera team ahead of a match as part of a local amputee soccer tournament held in Nuseirat Camp, Gaza Strip, June 19, 2022. The amputee program teaches a transformative lesson: Even if war interrupts life, passion and drive do not have to be a casualty.

“I used to be crazy about swimming and football – I was an excellent striker with my local team for 10 years before my injury,” Mr. Madi says after the match, a 1-0 Al Salem victory over Al Jazeera.

“But then my leg amputation darkened my life. I was convinced I would never play football again.” When his friends introduced him to the recently formed amputee football league, he found a new drive. 

“I insisted to myself that it is never over,” he recalls. “It was time to get out on the pitch.”

Mr. Madi spent months training to get accustomed to moving on crutches, and learned how to score without his prosthesis.

With each match, Mr. Madi says amputee football has made him more confident, more outgoing – and more motivated to get better.

“My friends and family were happy to see me determined to play this beautiful game again,” he recounts. “I started getting more keen to play and play better.”

He is now a player for the recently formed Palestinian national amputee football team, which, thanks to the ICRC, had a chance to travel to Iran this year to play in the West Asian qualifiers for the Amputee Football World Cup. The Palestinian team faced off against amputee football players from other countries for the very first time, winning a match against India.

“It was such a unique experience. We were delighted to meet other amputee players,” Mr. Madi says, adding that he was “inspired” by the atmosphere of the international match.

Although the Palestinian national team did not qualify for the World Cup, Mr. Madi says he now dreams of having more chances to play internationally to “raise the flag of Palestine.”

Mousa Abdallah, a referee in amputee football in Gaza, says it has been “great fun” for him to watch the players grow.

“We are strict with them; we do not want players to feel that we pity them. We aim to have stars who play well and abide by the rules,” Mr. Abdallah notes.

Life lessons

But the impacts of the matches go far beyond the field for Mr. Abu Saman and Mr. Madi.

Discarding his isolation, Mr. Abu Saman says being able to show off on the football field has given him the confidence to be “the first one at the party.

“I go with my crutches everywhere; I’m no longer declining my friends’ invitations,” he says. “I have learned to enjoy myself during celebrations and family events.”

Mr. Madi, meanwhile, says his on-field heroics and the ability to prove and improve himself have helped prepare him to become a father.

“I am now awaiting my first son,” he says. “I am so happy to do something that my son can be proud of.”

Coaches and players in Gaza have received training by Simon Baker, a renowned Irish coach and general secretary of the European Amputee Football Federation, on two separate visits to the coastal territory.

However, certain challenges are impeding the growth of amputee football in Gaza. Despite the presence of an estimated 1,765 amputees in Gaza, equipment is limited.

“We do not have a sufficient number of well-equipped football fields. We hope to engage all young amputees in football sport, but the shortage of financial aid means that we can only reach a small number of them,” notes Mr. Abu Shamlla, of the football association.  

The Israeli closure imposed on the coastal enclave prevents exchanges with other Arab amputee squads, such as in neighboring Jordan.

But players like Mr. Madi hope the local matches are just the beginning.

“Me and my friends still have a lot more to give to amputee football,” Mr. Madi says, adding, “My wish is that we will never be marginalized or overlooked again.”

Every superhero has an origin story. For Indigenous comic book store owner Lee Francis IV, the story begins at a drugstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was just a Laguna Pueblo kid, looking through the racks of comic books, when he discovered the “Iron Man” series. He was hooked. “I just felt an affinity to the heroes in them,” Dr. Francis says today. “Their stories were woven into mythology. I could identify with that.”

Dr. Francis may have identified with the heroism, but he didn’t see himself in “Iron Man,” “Batman,” “X-Men,” or other popular comics. Native American heroes were practically nonexistent when he was growing up. If there was an Indigenous person, that character was minor, such as a sidekick, with all the attendant stereotypes (medicine men, warriors with feathers in their hair). The comic book industry offered no Indigenous comic books for a young Dr. Francis and his friends to revel over. 

He has since done something about that. 

In 2017, he and Aaron Cuffee III opened Red Planet Books & Comics in Albuquerque, which sells not only comic books but also graphic novels and children’s books that are written by, illustrated by, or that feature Native Americans. Dr. Francis says it’s the only Native comic book shop in the world and one of only a handful of Native American bookstores in the United States. He has plans to expand the shop. 

“There are so many stories to tell,” he says in a telephone interview. “There’s always room for more!” 

“We’re not a monolith” 

Among the artists whose work appears at Red Planet is Jim Terry, a member of Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk Nation. His illustrated memoir, “Come Home, Indio,” was a finalist for the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the graphic novel/comics category and was chosen one of the Best Books of 2020 by Publishers Weekly. He is currently working on “West of Sundown” from Vault Comics.

“The question is, ‘Who is my audience?’” Mr. Terry says in an interview. “Am I talking to non-Natives about Native culture or am I writing for Natives? That is a beautiful tightrope to do both.” 

Mr. Terry, an artist who lives in Chicago, occasionally goes into classrooms to teach art. The Native kids draw wolves howling at the moon. They draw eagles flying. They draw noble warriors, he says. “If that’s all that’s ever shown to them, that’s all they know. I tell them they can draw whatever they want.” It’s a revelation to them.

Susan Montoya Bryan/AP/File

Aaron Cuffee III, whose title is chief creative officer, staffs the counter in 2020. The store also hosts mentorship programs for Indigenous writers and artists as well as organizes a convention for fans of Indigenous comics.

“We’re not a monolith,” says David Robertson, a prolific writer from Canada whose work is also featured at Red Planet. “There’s nothing that is specific to an ‘Indigenous story.’” Mr. Robertson also read comic books growing up, including “Spider-Man,” “Justice League,” and “Elfquest,” and imagined himself in those worlds even if Native Americans weren’t represented. A member of the Norway House Cree Nation, he’s won awards including the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award and the Aboriginal Circle of Educators award. 

Mr. Robertson wants to create Native heroes that avoid stereotypes. “It’s an act of reclamation,” he says. Showing a Native hero can inspire young readers to think that they, too, have special powers. “I want them to define themselves,” he says. 

Impacts on the culture

There’s an educational and outreach component to the work of Dr. Francis, the Red Planet owner, who has a Ph.D. in education. He founded Native Realities Press in 2015, which publishes books, anthologies, and games with Native perspectives. He is also executive director of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, a mentoring organization. For his fellow “Indiginerds” he created Indigenous Comic Con, now called IndigiPop X. The impresario is already planning the 2023 iteration, which is coming, he hopes, in the spring. 

Red Planet is making an impact, not only for Indigenous artists and writers by supporting and selling their work, but also for readers as well. 

The shop carries titles that appeal to a broad range of people and interests, including “Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story,” a children’s picture book; “Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction,” an LGBTQ story collection; “Healer of the Water Monster,” a novel for middle-grade readers; and “7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga,” an epic graphic novel. 

Susan Montoya Bryan/AP/File

Comic books by Native American authors line the shelves of Red Planet Books & Comics in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“It’s a joy to see Native folks come into the shop and be amazed at what we’re doing. To know how amazing it is to be able to tell our own stories,” Dr. Francis says. 

Centuries of propaganda

Recognition has been a long time coming, say Indigenous artists. The comics industry has hundreds of years of anti-Native American propaganda to overcome, and it has been slow to act, although there have been attempts over the decades. 

DC Comics had characters like Ohiyesa “Pow Wow” Smith, a sheriff with Sioux heritage, in “Western Comics” of the 1950s. Marvel’s first Native American superhero was Red Wolf, who appeared in 1970. Red Wolf had mystical powers and a trusted wolf companion named Lobo. 

Comic books created by Native people, or at least created in consultation with tribes, included “Tribal Force.” First published in 1996, it was created by writer Jon Proudstar, whose heritage includes Yaqui and Mayan ancestors, and artist Ryan Huna Smith, who has Chemehuevi and Navajo roots. “Peace Party,” published in 1999, told the story of two Hopi Pueblo cousins and their adventures.

Comic book artists, according to a recent survey by Zippia, are 73% white. Only 1.1% are Native. With graphic novels and comics selling upwards of $1.2 billion a year in North America, there’s room for improvement in Native representation in the industry. 

It’s coming, say Dr. Francis and the artists interviewed. Comics insiders are seeing an explosion of interest in Native stories, particularly with the recent successes of TV series like “Rutherford Falls” and Taika Waititi’s and Sterlin Harjo’s “Reservation Dogs.” (Mr. Waititi also returns to the Marvel universe this month, as the director of “Thor: Love and Thunder.”)

“I am encouraged,” Mr. Terry says. “There’s a renaissance happening. Everyone is free to tell their story.”

Dr. Francis says, “I want to make the planet a better place. Just like superheroes do.”

Reuters

Girls perform yoga on their scooters at a park on International Yoga Day in Ahmedabad, India, June 21.

Based on the world norm for the ratio of females to males in a society, India is missing more than 30 million women. That is the estimated toll over decades from parents who used medical means to select the sex of their child – in favor of boys. Despite laws that prohibit such sex selection – either by abortion or during in vitro fertilization – parents in India still seek the procedures to avoid bearing girls. (See related story, here.) The threat of prosecution has not been enough to change long-held cultural norms.

Attitudes about girls in India are rooted in social traditions expressed as economic choices. Sons usually stay closer to their parents and care for them in old age. Daughters traditionally move to a husband’s family; in addition, their parents are expected to pay large dowries. These preferences come at a national cost. Only about a third of married women work in the formal economy. If India had gender parity in the workplace, according to a McKinsey & Co. study, it would gain nearly $3 trillion in income over 10 years.

For years, the government has tried to improve attitudes toward girls and to tap their potential. “We need to prioritize girls’ education, treat their rights on par with those of boys, provide them with skills and livelihood opportunities, and engage with boys and men to address patriarchal mindsets,” said Ayushmann Khurrana, an actor appointed as UNICEF’s advocate for ending violence against children, last year. “One family at a time, we will change how we value girls and respect them.”

Several measures are moving in that direction. Parliament is considering a bill that would raise the legal marriage age from 18 to 21 in recognition of the need to enable girls to pursue a full education. A nationwide campaign is attempting to ensure that girls return to school as the pandemic ends. And activist groups are trying to reverse bans on giving cellphones to older girls, which deprives them of a tool to join the workforce.

One trend that seems to be having a notable effect, according to a United Nations study, is the inclusion of more women in leadership roles at the village level.

A Pew survey in March shows that progress is being made. It found most Indians agree that “women and men make equally good political leaders.” Some 62% of adults say that men and women should share the duties of raising children. When it comes to the composition of families, 94% said it was important to have at least one son and 90% said it was also important to have at least one daughter. Some 64% agreed that sons and daughters should have equal rights to inheritance.

India can also take inspiration from another country – South Korea – that once had a worrisome sex-selection issue and made great strides to overcome its gender disparities.

By 2020, South Korean girls were enrolled in education at a greater rate than boys. Between 1990 and 2019, labor force participation by women rose from 49% to 60%. Those gains have resulted in lower marriage and fertility rates and a broader recognition of women’s worth. By 2007, the World Bank proclaimed South Korea as the “first Asian country to reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth.”

Despite its own cultural norms toward girls reaching back generations, South Korea has shown that a growing recognition of the inherent worth of every child can lead to a more equitable society – and a choice for boys and girls to discover their individuality.