ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING - "India's Missing Girls"

[GCP]

Daughters aren't wanted in India. So many female foetuses are illegally aborted that baby boys now hugely outnumber baby girls, while a government minister has begged parents to abandon their children rather than kill them. What does this mean for the country's future, ask Raekha Prasad and Randeep Ramesh

snip

Last year, in a series of reports entitled Kokh Me Katl, or Murder in the Womb, two journalists working for India's Sahara Samay television channel found 100 doctors, in both private and government hospitals, who were prepared to perform illegal terminations of girl foetuses. In the grainy TV pictures, doctors from four states and 36 cities talked with chilling casualness about how to dump the remains. Many weren't bothered about the foetus's age, just that it was a girl that could be got rid off. The average cost of the procedure was a few thousand rupees (around £30).

In Agra, one doctor told the reporters to get rid of the dead foetus in the Yamuna river, which curves past the Taj Mahal. "That is not a problem. Take a rickshaw and throw it in the river," he said. In Dholpur, a town in Rajasthan, a female medic said the fields were pitted with the unmarked graves of unborn girls. She told the undercover couple that if their foetus was too big to easily be disposed of, they should pay a street sweeper to get rid of the body.

(How ironic that the Taj Majal celebrates the life of a beloved wife.

snip

Although ministers in India have woken up to "a national crisis", the response has been to condone the abandonment of female babies. "lf you don't want a girl, leave her to us," Renuka Chowdhury, India's minister of state for women and child development, said recently. The government "will bring up your children. Don't kill them". The announcement was a desperate response to stem India's dramatic deficit of women. In the west, women outnumber men by at least 3%. India has almost 8% more men than women. The question for India is what sort of future it faces without enough women. One dystopian answer, given by academics Valerie M Hudson and Andrea den Boer, is that a generation of men unable to find wives has already emerged. In their book, Bare Branches, they write of men who will never marry and have children. It is these men, they say, who are already largely responsible for social unrest in those areas where women are in short supply.

Much more here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2022983,00.html

[jody]

1. Society already accepts elective abortion for gene specific reasons, e.g. Down syndrome. What's the

moral difference between elective abortion for Down syndrome and elective abortion for sex, physical ability, mental ability, etc.?

[crikkett]

3. I think it's the raging packs of unmarried boys

causing civil unrest.

Or its perhaps the institutionalized sexism. You know, if you kill off girls in the womb what does that say about your attitude towards the worth of a woman?

[jody]

6. What's the moral difference? n/t

[BoneDaddy]

10. There is no need to attack the boys

to make this a legitimate issue of discussion. You make the opposite mistake of what you claim is wrong. Both are wrong when we value one gender over the other.

[crikkett]

14. i forgot the sarcasm smilie

as I latched onto the mental image presented in the article.

[BoneDaddy]

16. ah np

:)

[bicentennial_baby]

4. Being female isn't a birth defect

[jody]

7. What's the moral difference? n/t

[bullimiami]

9. but for rural chinese and indians having a girl is seen as a social defect.

the boys are seen to strenthen the family because they work and help support the parents.
girls are seen as a burden because the investment pays off supporting someone elses family.

their societies would benefit from a pragmatism overhaul.
there are solutions but it will be very difficult to shift the societal momentum of a billion++ people.

[bicentennial_baby]

11. Yeah, but I'm not much of a cultural relativist

I hear you, but it is the 21st century...Maybe someone should alert them to that fact...

[bullimiami]

12. i think the 21st century hasnt trickled down to large parts of the world.

[crikkett]

2. But it sure is nice to have a buncha unmarried men around

to blame civil unrest on.

[bullimiami]

5. china has a simlar problem. too many boys.

with the one child policy people want that child to be a boy.

you know what happens when there are a too many men and not enough women?

crime and war.

this is very bad for the entire world.
i dont suppose chinese and indian mores would allow for polyandry which I think would be a reasonable solution at least for the near future.

[YOY]

15. "what happens when there are a too many men and not enough women?"

"Crime and war."

Either that or a whole lotta gay lovin'. :spank:

[Crayson]

18. my guess is that women will be rationed...

... either they will end up with the richest and most powerful men of their free will.
Or they will be forced.

Or maybe we will witness a migration of (then in 20 years) impoverished european and US women to rich asian men.
Or sex tourism of asian men to the US.
A world upside down.

[AliceWonderland]

21. Yes, I thought about the situation in China when reading this, too

Here's a Guardian UK link on the skewed ration of boys to girls in China, and the practice of sex-selection:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,714412,00.html

A human rights issue, but also a economic-social issue. This article highlights the economic (rural families can earn more income with a male child) and the social (urban middle classes are still more likely to want a boy, if they can only have one child under official policy).

[sweetheart]

8. old hinduism

The article might not take in to account the likely religious view of the actors,
that life cannot be taken, that it merely transitions to another life in another
body, and that if there is no place for a child, in a country with 20 times the
population of britain, or 4 times the united states, another poor child on the
streets... an unwanted child in india leads a hard hard life inconceivable in your
comfy computer chair.

And parents who believe the hindu world view, may believe they are doing their
children a favor by not consigning them to the street, but another life where
there will be a place for them. It puts suicide and other actions of life and
death from such a culture in a framing of the chaotic unity of life, and that
there is no sin.

It doesn't make killing your kids right, but i would hope the guardian does
more reporting on the ground in rural indian villiages to gather the worldview
of the subcontinent.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2063667852598904740

[marshall]

13. Hindu version of the "right to choose"?

That's an interesting point. Maybe it's not just the mother who is choosing NOT to give birth to a girl, they may also feel that they are giving the unborn spirit the right to choose not to be born as a female.

[Crayson]

17. This means women will be in high demand within 15 years...

...and will probably fetch large sums of money as they are traded back and forth.

[GCP]

19. Did you read the article?

The families of women pay the grooms' families. A daughter is an absolute liability in India even thought they're now becoming scarce. It's a totally fucked up system IMHO.

[WinkyDink]

20. Gee. Indian men, who help support this cultural deparvity, can't find wives. Can there be a big

enough "DUH!!!" for these losers?