India Probes Female Baby Body Parts Find

[DeSwiss]

India probes baby body parts find

Monday, 23 July 2007, 12:55 GMT 13:55 UK
By Jyotsna Singh
BBC News, Delhi

Police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa say they have recovered nearly 30 bags full of babies' body parts from a waste dump near a maternity clinic. Forensic tests are being carried out on the remains following the raid near the town of Nayagarh on Sunday. It is thought the find could be linked to the killing of female foetuses - a practice fairly widespread in India. According to one estimate, up to 10m female foetuses may have been aborted in the country in the past two decades. India, where boys have traditionally been favoured over girls, banned gender selection and selective abortion in 1994.

Buried
A senior police office in Orissa said they raided an area outside Nayagarh following a tip-off. The bags, full of skulls and bones, were buried inside a pit in a plot of land belonging to a maternity clinic owner. The clinic owner and manager have now been taken into custody by the police.

*snip*

Skewed sex ratio
Officials say a detailed investigation is now under way and initial indications point to sex selective abortions. Similar incidents have been reported from other parts of the country in recent months, raising concerns about India's dwindling female population. Female foeticide is believed to be one of the main reasons for the skewed sex ratio in India. India's minister for Women and Child Development, Renuka Chowdhary, has said the government plans to monitor all pregnancies to prevent female foeticide.

In June, police arrested the owner of a clinic near Delhi on suspicion of illegally aborting female foetuses. The arrest followed a raid at the clinic in Gurgaon in Haryana state. Officials said the remains of several foetuses were found in a well nearby. Last year, a surprise raid in Patiala district in Punjab province unearthed the remains of at least 50 female foetuses from a well by a private clinic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6911702.stm

*** - They don't want girl babies because then they'd have to pay a dowry to marry her off. Even though the demand for, and payment of dowries is against Indian law. But it is a law that is rarely, if ever enforced. This is beyond sick....

[TahitiNut]

1. Sounds like grist for the "pro-life" mill to me.

:puke:

As appalling as I might regard it, 'pro-choice' permits that choice to be made on any basis whatsoever. Sovereignty is sovereignty. Period.

[Crunchy Frog]

4. I doubt there's alot of soveriegnty involved

when you're acting under the pressure of your husband and in-laws.

[DeSwiss]

6. Yeah well....

...I wonder just how much "choice" is actually involved in all this for Indian women.

:shrug:

[Miss Chybil]

11. Exactly. The female mortality rate in these parts of the world are much higher than the male rate.

Females and female fetuses are murdered, abused, and aborted with such regularity that only considering the "missing" aborted females does not give the entire picture regarding all "missing" females within the population.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0098-7921%28200206%2928%3A2%3C285%3AATPIGB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

[Miss Chybil]

2. And what will the men do when they have to pay a premium for their brides

because there aren't any?

[WinkyDink]

7. They come from elsewhere.

[Miss Chybil]

10. They already have a huge problem in China.

Only the men who are well-off, or well-employed, are able to marry.

[DeSwiss]

9. Porn?

:shrug:

[aquart]

3. And yet, they don't die out. Odd.

[Miss Chybil]

8. India's 'girl deficit' deepest among educated

Study: -sex abortion claims 500,000 girls a year.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI – Banned by Indian law for more than a decade, the practice of prenatal selection and selective abortion remains a common practice in India, claiming up to half a million female children each year, according to a recent study by the British medical journal, The Lancet.
The use of ultrasound equipment to determine the sex of an unborn child - introduced to India in 1979 - has now spread to every district in the country. The study found it played a crucial role in thetermination of an estimated 10 million female fetuses in the two decades leading up to 1998, and 5 million since 1994, the year the practice was banned. Few doctors in regular clinics offer the service openly, but activists estimate that sex-selection is a $100 million business in India, largely through mobile sex-selection clinics that can drive into almost any village or neighborhood.

The practice is common among all religious groups - Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Muslims, and Christians - but appears to be most common among educated women, a fact that befuddles public health officials and women's rights activists alike.

"More educated women have more access to technology, they are more privileged, and most educated families have the least number of children," says Sabu George, a researcher with the Center for Women's Development Studies in New Delhi, who did not participate in the study. "This is not just India. Everywhere in the world, smaller families come at the expense of girls."

Like China, India has encouraged smaller families through a mixture of financial incentives and campaigns calling for two children at most. Faced with such pressure, many families, rich and poor alike, are turning to prenatal selection to ensure that they receive a son. It's a problem with many potential causes - from social traditions to the economic burden of dowries - but one that could have strong social repercussions for generations to come.

more...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0113/p01s04-wosc.html

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I wonder if this practice might be deterred

if the punishment for sex selective abortion was to have the father sterilized. Especially since it's mostly the fathers and the in-laws making these decisions.