Tragedy of baby girls spreads to the rich

Scotsman ^ | SHAIKH AZIZUR RAHMAN

[nickcarraway]

WHEN stockbroker Rajdeep Oberoi and his wife Lata heard they were to have a baby after a wait of 10 years they were overjoyed.

But this middle-class family from Bombay in India soon had their happiness shattered when they took the decision to illegally discover the sex of their baby and found it was not the son their culture demands.

The Oberois took the shocking decision that Lata should have an abortion and try again for a boy, and so became the latest statistic in a new trend among India’s educated middle classes.

A new report published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed that the practice of female foeticide, in which an unborn baby is aborted or killed at birth simply because it is not a boy, is now spreading from India’s poor and rural classes to affluent urban families.

The report said that far from helping women win equality, increased affluence had brought little change, and that sex discrimination had in fact spread through all levels of Indian society. And it is estimated there are between three and five million girl babies, born or unborn, ‘disappearing’ each year.

India has a shocking history of child-killing due to gender, but the tradition has largely been among the uneducated and rural classes. However, the new figures reveal that the sharpest fall in the number of female babies being born is now in Delhi.

Indian patriarchal society emphasises the need for male heirs who will earn a living for their family. Girls as a result are often seen as an economic and social burden.

But for families like the Oberois, money is not the driving force. Lata Oberoi explained: "As soon as my mother-in-law knew about my pregnancy she started planning how to celebrate the birth of their grandson. A family pressure, to give birth only to a boy baby, started building up on me.

"The tension forced me to undergo the sex determination test of my baby secretly."

As soon as she told her husband, he told her the girl could not be born because they needed a male heir to take over his business. Lata added: "Unless I get a son I cannot be respected as a woman in the family. If I again fail to have a son, naturally we have decided to go to an infertility clinic to get a male embryo implanted through in-vitro fertilisation."

The methods used in the past to get rid of unborn or newborn girls have been varied and shocking. Opium has been used as well as over-salted milk, which causes a slow and painful death in a baby. Midwives have also been known to hit newborn girls over the head or throttle them.

These days the methods are more modern, but no less disturbing. Despite being outlawed in 1994 in an effort to stop the practice, ultrasound tests to determine the sex of a baby are now used in order that an abortion can be performed.

And in cities across India, the number of illegal clinics has soared with the demand.

Commenting on the UNFPA report, Indian health minister Sushma Swaraj said discrimination against women has increased alarmingly. "It has spread across all religions, in rural and urban areas, among the rich and the poor," she said. "Soon many men will not find brides if girl foetuses continue to be destroyed in the womb."

Dr Gautam Sehgal, an executive of ADS Diagnostic Centre in New Delhi, said: "Education has in fact nothing to do with it. I have received requests for sex determination from friends who have studied and lived in developed countries, people for whom money is the least of problems."

Murali Desai, a sociologist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay, agrees, believing that education and affluence have failed to bring with them values of equality. "It has brought consumerism and a commodification of relationships," he said. "Women prefer sons, as it is often the only way to increase their status in their otherwise subordinate life."

A doctor in the town of Aligarh, near Delhi, said that many ultrasound centres and private hospitals in the area earned more than three-quarters of their income from sex determination tests and the abortion of female foetuses. He said: "The sex determination test is done secretly. After the abortion, the unscrupulous doctor issues a certificate which says that the case was that of a natural miscarriage and he tried his best but could not save the baby. This helps the mother escape a chance crackdown by police."

MAniruddha Malpani, an IVF specialist who runs the flourishing Malpani Clinic in Bombay’s upmarket Colaba area, defended the freedom to choose the sex of babies for his patients. "I have treated about 75 patients and all of them chose to have sons. In a democracy, people should be allowed to choose the sex of their children," he said.

Endangered Species

ACCORDING to the United Nations report, New Delhi and Bombay are now seeing 900 girls being born for every 1,000 boys.

The south-west of the capital New Delhi, the most affluent area of the city, has the lowest ratio with 845 girls born to every 1,000 boys.

In the commercial capital of Bombay there are an estimated 898 girls for every 1,000 boys. And in the city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, there is now a rate of only 814 girls being born to every 1,000 boys.

Up to 10 of the 17 districts in Punjab, the country’s most prosperous farming state, have fewer than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.

The report revealed that each of these areas have seen a decline of more than 50 girls per 1,000 boys since 1991.

Globally a normal ratio shows more women than men being born - about 1,003 females to 1000 males.

[nickcarraway]

ping

[Semper Paratus]

Wait till they find the "Gay Gene".

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This'll slow down the growth of India's population.

[ThinkDifferent]

This is pretty bad in the short term, but supply and demand will fix it in the long term.

[The KG9 Kid]

You can put a third-worlder in a fancy suit, but all you have done is to give a third-worlder a fancy suit.

[editor-surveyor]

Wait till they find the "Gay Gene".

I can tell you where he hangs out: The Belly-up Deli on Bryant Street @ 20th

[Campion]

What's going to happen to India and China when they each have 20 or 30 million (or more) males with no chance to find a mate? A really big, really ugly war to kill off the "surplus" boys? Lots of crime? A whole bunch of old men without families or heirs resorting to alcoholism and dying in the streets? All of the above?

Ain't abortion wonderful for women? </sarcasm>

[68skylark]

How many times have we heard liberals say that all cultures are morally equal, and they should all be treasured and celebrated as equals?

The more one learns about the world, the more one learns how &^$#ed up and stupid that is.

[editor-surveyor]

but supply and demand will fix it in the long term.

No it won't; it'll just cause more men to become homo.

[Polybius]

A new report published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed that the practice of female foeticide, in which an unborn baby is aborted or killed at birth simply because it is not a boy, is now spreading from India’s poor and rural classes to affluent urban families.

Anybody notice how the media uses terms such as "foeticide" and "unborn baby" only in cases where the practice is considered Politically Incorrect?

[wizardoz]

Well, what can one say? The culture is doing this to itself. Finally, a catastrophe that no one can possibly blame on America!

But wait... the day is still young...

[MHGinTN]

This must be driving the NOW and NARAL ghouls crazy ... after all, it is a woman's right to choose, right? [I call them ghouls because they know absolutely that these are alive fellow human beings the serial killer abortionists are slaughtering, yet the ghouls continue to lie and dissemble to mislead the unwarry that these are merely 'pre-human beings'.

[nickcarraway]

Yes, we saw that in the case of Daniel Pearl.

[kazatzkeh]

This is only a concern because the babies are female! if they were male none of these lefties especially not the UN would give a damn.

[Lee Heggy]

Yeah, I was wondering when someone blames this on Bush.

[AppyPappy]

What they fail to see is that Americans will buy their daughters for thousands of dollars.

[nickcarraway]

I doubt most of them are that upset. First, they se abortion as the most important thing. Secondly, they are nihilistic and misanthropic.

[Saundra Duffy]

And the feminists said, RIGHT ON! They don't care that only females are being targetted for the trash and that males are preferred and exhalted. This is sickening!

[DonQ]

One reason for this, is that the Indian govt is so intent on discouraging the population explosion that it has reserved civil service jobs and various other benefits for families and heads of families with not more than two children. In any environment, with a limitation like that, families may be forced to make ugly decisions ... to be rid of a child with (or predicted to have) a handicap, or to be rid of a costly daughter, etc.