India baby girl deaths 'increase'

[JI7]

Source: BBC

A report by the UK charity says increasing numbers of female foetuses were being aborted and baby girls deliberately neglected and left to die.

The research also found that ratios of girls to boys were declining fastest in comparatively prosperous urban areas.

The charity also blames other illegal practices - such as allowing the umbilical cord to become infected - for the growing gender imbalance.

"The real horror of the situation is that, for women, avoiding having daughters is a rational choice. But for wider society it's creating an appalling and desperate state of affairs," Laura Turquet, women's rights policy official at ActionAid said.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7466916.stm

---

i hope the people doing this are unable to find any women to marry their guys and they end up with no grandkids.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. IIRC, the same thing was happening in China...

It's probably not still happening since the devastating earthquake...

Yup, when the young men discover there aren't enough women to marry and give them children...

All bets are off!

It's horrifying what's happening to those helpless babies...

[Spouting Horn]

2. I thought I read somewhere

where the birth ratio in China was like 130 boys for every 100 girls...

That's going to make for some very frustrated men...

[Hekate]

3. Kidnap of women for wives is on the upswing in China. Not a happy thing. nt

[Scairp]

36. They aren't kidnapping women

Smugglers are snatching little girls, some of them no more than babies, and selling them off to families who have a son who then raise her to marry their child when she is old enough. Gotta wonder what age "old enough" is in these rural areas. I think that there are even cases where parents of a little girl sell the child to one of these brokers, and then try for a boy, saying the other kid died. The "one child" policy has been in place a long time, and though I understand why they did it, in that culture it just doesn't work. Boys are still more valued in the rural parts of the country, and as long as this is true, baby girls in China will continue to be abandoned or sold off or even murdered by their own parents. You don't see Westerners going to China to adopt baby boys, they are almost without exception baby girls, and most of them have living parents who dropped them off at the orphanage so they could become childless and continue to have try to have a son.

[LynneSin]

4. India needs to abolish the Dowry system

too expensive to raise daughters where the parents are expected to provide money & goods to win over a husband. Really sucky system if you ask me!

[JI7]

5. but this is mostly happening in wealthy areas , i think it's more cultural

the whole thing in having a sense of pride or honor in having a son. this is happening in the United Kingdom also.

the areas where this is not a problem are those where communists either run it or had a lot of influence like Kerala . because of their philosophy they were able to instill a sense of equality.

[smitra]

10. It is cultural...

It had little to do with communist rule in Kerala. One of the main communities in the state, the Nairs, has traditionally had a matriarchal (actually, according to this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy, a 'matrifocal') system of property inheritance. Women have traditionally played a more major role as a result.

The other communist ruled state in India, West Bengal (which has had the communists rule continuously since 1977) does not have a record as good as Kerala.

[freedomnorth]

19. JI7 still pointed out correctly

that communism has tendency towards equality. Changing culture is aways difficult, and having matriarchal system already installed greatly improves situation.

[Liberal_in_LA]

17. I read somewhere recently that a pref 4 girls was growing in Japan where sons where expected 2 own

home prior to marriage. Parents were overburdened with trying to help sons buy homes and were preferring girls. I'll look up that article.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

20. it is already illegal. nt

[BlueIris]

6. Misogyny must die. It is the only way civilization can survive. nt

[skooooo]

8. Good luck with that.

:(

[BlueIris]

13. Thanks. With those kinds of defeatist sentiments, you absolve yourself of your responsibility

to help abolish "that."

[skooooo]

14. My responsibility??

How the hell is it MY responsibility?? Sorry, I didn't sign up to solve the world's problems. There's nothing I can do to change the attitudes in India. If you feel like that's something you can accomplish, more power to you.

[Dr. Strange]

35. Not only that, it's a double-edged sword.

If you did try to do something about it (or urged our government to), you'd be accused of being an ugly American imperialist. Quite the Catch-22.

[fasttense]

7. This is less likely to happen in societies that

value females for more than just sex, baby making and domestic support. When women have a value of their own, outside their role as wife, then female fetuses are not culled out and baby girls are less likely to be abandon to the elements.

[Demeter]

23. Dream On!

This happens less in societies that value people over profits, equality over privilege, and don't believe that Western mantra "He who dies with the most toys, wins". Notice how it's "He" and it's NOT a generic use of the term, either.

[kristopher]

9. This is (ethics aside) a historically normal cultural response to population pressure.

Please don't flame me for discussing the realities of the human condition. I'm not endorsing the practices discussed.

The logic has been noted here with the remarks about no grandkids. That is the reason it happens. If you have 100 males and one female you have a totally different population growth curve than if you have 100 females and one male.
Traditionally, the use of female infanticide was less costly to mothers than the alternatives of non-sex specific abortions induced without modern medical techniques. Other measures of birth control were limited but included extended periods of nursing (4-5 years) that precluded ovulation and cultural values that promoted chastity and/or delayed marriage (and childbearing) for several years past the onset of menses.

What is puzzling is that the availability of modern birth control measures makes the practice of deliberately selecting against females unnecessary. So what is probably happening is that old cultural values are prevailing against the newer technologies and/or there is some problem interfering with the use of modern birth control.

In any case, greater education and time for cultural change to catch up to the technologies are probably the keys to solving both the population problem and the gender bias.

[Dollface]

12. Birth control would interfere with the having boy babies. They would probably use it if it could be

gender specific birth control.

[sudopod]

30. Ask the smurfs about that one. Poor Smurfette. :3 nt

[JVS]

11. From a population control standpoint, this trend will benefit India.

Some of the methods are horribly unethical though.

[tidy_bowl]

15. I am appalled at the comments....

...here on DU. Who are we to proclaim that another culture is 'better' or 'worse' than any other? It is this type of Western arrogance that the world has come to loathe. Some people are perfectly happy in a misogynous society and no one has any 'right' to tell them to live otherwise. When I go to another culture I do not judge but experience its differences and am richer for it.

[brentspeak]

16. Uh, ok

[SocratesInSpirit]

18. By that logic, we can't condemn Nazi Germany

for the numerous atrocities they committed because their "culture" required they weed out "subhuman" races so the "perfect" Aryan strain is not "polluted". Cultural relativity is a good start to getting outside of one's own narrow experiences/perspective - until it requires one to be accepting of a cultural practice that leads to killing or hurting other people. That's when my tolerance disappears. Any cultural belief that requires the oppression or destruction of other human beings deserves to be heaped upon with scorn, horror and dismissal.

And the only people who are truly happy in societies where not everyone is treated equally are the people who are benefiting most from the system. As a woman, I am pretty damn sick of hearing about women treated like chattel and killed or having their rights denied because they are not men. They deserve better than that.

[Tansy_Gold]

21. Nor should we have invaded Iraq even if they did have WMDs

since it is the absolute right of their culture to have them and to use them as they see fit: to annihilate Israel, to annihilate Iran, to annihilate anyone.

Nor should we condemn the suicide bombers who blow up public buses or police stations, even if they kill innocent bystanders, since that is just their culture speaking.

Nor should we condemn the Taliban for anything they do, no matter how appalling it may seem to us in our culture. Ditto for the so-called atrocities in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Aceh, Sri Lanka, etc., etc., etc.

Let's see, we can't criticize the Saudis for beheading adulterers, we can't criticize fathers who kill their daughters for insulting the family's honor by not marrying the husband arranged for them, we can't object to child abuse when it's done in the name of religion.

And we might as well open all the prisons right now, because some of those murders were committed so individuals could join a gang and we have no right to criticize the gang community just because their standards are different from ours. Same with those drug dealers and the prostitutes and the home invaders and the rapists and the corporate insiders and the fraudsters and the market manipulators and the mortgage liars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Tansy Gold, who will use the :sarcasm: because sometimes some people don't get it

Oh, yeah, and a P.S. on edit to add: Let's not say another unkind word about those cultures that practice female genital mutilation either, whether in their "home" countries or when they bring it to, well, to the good ol' U.S. of A. After all, it's just their cultural practice, and it shouldn't matter to us if their girl children suffer untold agony during the procedure, are denied all capacity for sexual pleasure whatsoever, are often left with serious and even life-threatening injuries. I mean, it's none of our business, right? RIGHT?????

:grr:

[smitra]

22. There should be NOTHING wrong in standing up for universal human rights...

This particular issue is being discussed here in the context of India, but is also present in other Asian societies - China, Korea, etc, and according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion_and_infanticide), even among Inuit.

Being of Indian origin, and having been raised in an urban, English-educated, middle-class milieu, I can speak to this. One of the main reasons for this is the tradition of 'dowry' given by the bride's family to the groom's at the time of the woman's marriage. This affected the urban middle-class population as well - maybe more, as the amounts expected were larger. Despite this being tradition, dowry was outlawed in India at the federal level in 1961. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry_law_in_India.

The practice continued despite the law and the improvements to it in later years. The concept of dowry was re-labeled as a 'gift' and the amount of the 'gift' that the bride's father would give to the groom's family became the subject of negotiation. Unless a law is passed that outlaws ALL gifts at weddings (which I believe would not be enforceable even if passed), the practice would continue.

I have reason to hope however. In my extended family back in India, my generation was the first in which women received extensive education - college and beyond. Many of them have had jobs outside the house. Thanks to this economic 'power', many of them got married on their own terms, to partners of their own choosing (that is, not a traditional 'arranged marriage') and dowry has not been a problem. I am glad to say that in the next generation of the extended family there are more girls than boys.

How to extend this kind of situation to the more than billion-plus people of India remains the issue. And one wonders how long it will take. But people - at least in the major urban centers - are very aware of it and CONDEMN it. If only they did more active work against it....

[Marrah_G]

29. But the Nazi's were bad because they killed men

These folks only kill off female children, so it's no big deal to some.

[JerseygirlCT]

25. And I am appalled at your post

Either you are dangerously naive or something far worse.

Misogyny is never an acceptable cultural norm. The murder of baby girls because a society has placed far greater value on baby boys is not ever acceptable. Treating women as second-class human beings is never acceptable.

Accepting those things as somehow culturally understandable is not acceptable.

[Skittles]

26. LOL

seeing extreme misogyny and sexism in another country would not make me feel RICHER

[mainegreen]

27. *groan*

That's just the sort of logic that is used to say Iran's ok for hanging gays and Saudi Arabia is ok for oppressing women.

[Marrah_G]

28. Wow- I think you are on the wrong board. We actually care about women and equality here.

[sudopod]

31. LOL nt

[Xenotime]

24. It's their choice on partial birth abortion.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. "Partial birth abortion" is a right-wing scare term, not a medical one

It's exceedingly rare and used only when the mother's life is in danger.

[Deja Q]

34. True, but it's still sickening a thing to do.

IMHO, of course, YMMV.

[Hannah Bell]

37. so you believe babies are allowed to come out of the womb "partially,"

& then killed?

under what circumstances might this occur? and what would be the benefit?

[Deja Q]

33. Well, that's one way to reduce the population...

Not the best and it is anti-woman, but it's not our culture or right to interfere, right?



I shouldn't sound so harsh or 'distant'. I don't know if it's the caste system, population control, or what not, but surely there are better ways than selective abortions? :(