10 Million Fewer Girls Born in India

Lawmakers and women's rights activists raised an alarm Monday over new evidence indicating about 7,000 fewer girls than expected are born each day in India, where women routinely suffer discrimination and parents often abort female fetuses.

The spread of ultrasound technology allowing parents to find out the gender of their unborn children has resulted in the large-scale 'disappearance' of girls here. One study released earlier this year estimated that 10 million fewer girls were born here than expected in the past 20 years.

The government must 'rise in revolt against the male child mania,' said lawmaker Gurudas Dasgupta during a parliamentary debate Monday.

The debate was spurred in part by a report last week from UNICEF, which estimated that 7,000 girls go unborn each day in India, where abortions are legal and a ban on finding out the sex of unborn children and aborting female fetuses is widely flouted.

The result is a skewed gender ratio - many districts in the country of more than 1 billion people routinely report only 800 females born for every 1,000 males.

According to the latest census figures in India, the number of girls per 1,000 boys declined from 945 to 927 between 1991 and 2001.

In China, where there is a similar preference for male offspring, official figures show 117 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

China bans the use of ultrasound or other means to determine the sex of a fetus, but doctors who do so usually face only administrative penalties, not criminal charges. The situation in India is driving activists to demand the government declare a 'national emergency' and take tough measures to enforce existing laws.

'It is truly a state of emergency and the government has to act,' said women's rights activist Ranjana Kumari.

UNICEF's report included dire warnings about the social fallout from the skewed gender ratio - girls getting married at younger ages, dropping out of school and dying earlier after being forced bear children when they are too young. It could also result in more violence against girls and women, UNICEF said.

The government says it is clamping down on doctors who tell parents the sex of their unborn children and abort female fetuses. But in more than a decade, only one such doctor has been convicted, and some senior officials acknowledge tougher action is needed.

'Female feticide should be treated as a crime and not just a social evil, therefore stringent punishment and punitive action is required,' said Renuka Choudhury, India's women and child development minister.

Indian families traditionally have preferred boys, partly because of the widespread Hindu religious belief that only a son could perform the last rites when his father dies. In addition, girls are seen as a burden on the family, requiring a huge dowry that many families cannot afford. They are generally the last to be educated or get medical treatment when ill.

Choudhury said the government was planning to offer incentives to village councils that worked to change such discriminatory attitudes.

But as India's ponderous bureaucracy cranks up for a nationwide awareness campaign, non-governmental organizations, student groups and civil society organizations have already taken up the task to publicly explain the urgency of the issue.

In recent weeks, hundreds of students, both men and women, have held demonstrations and candlelight vigils in many cities to create awareness.

'It's a message we hope to take to the people - invest in girls, realize their value, help them realize their potential, let them live,' Kumari said.

Sounds to me like "Eugenics, Beijing-Style"

A plan for controlling the ratio of the sexes

By Professor Xiong Ping, Ph.D.

Population Institute Review, November/December 1996, page 10.

Editors note:

We print the following article, written by a Chinese professor of forensic medicine, not because we endorse the ideas it contains. Our motivation is the opposite: We have allowed Dr. Xiong Ping to vent his views in this publication precisely because we find them so starkly reprehensible. We have in the past carried stories about the character and consequences of China's one-child policy. But no reportage, no editorializing of ours could possibly convey, the way that Dr. Xiong's effusion does, the degree to which Communist Party-controlled discussions of population control in China are so utterly void of human sentiments, so lacking in any appreciation of human rights.

Dr. Xiong's "modest proposal" to breed better Chinese men (and women) is easily summarized. All women would be allowed two children. The first would be born naturally. But the state would insist-presumably by sex-selective abortion-that the majority of second children be boys. The reasons for this "controlled disproportion," as he calls it, is frankly eugenic in nature. His aim is to produce a population that is not only smaller, but of significantly "higher quality" than that which now lives and breathes.

Such is Dr. Xiong's state of mind that he considers his plan to be progressive, even liberal. After all, as he implies, his proposal would mean that the restrictive one-child policy would be relaxed and replaced with a two-child policy. It would mean the end of the forcible sterilization and abortion of the mentally and physically handicapped.

Yet it would replace these human rights violations with others, no less repugnant: The elimination of large numbers of female fetuses in utero by the state. The conscious denial of the possibility of marriage and family for a substantial percentage of the male population. State endorsement of the notion that the handicapped are somehow less than human and should be eliminated. And continued forced abortions and sterilizations for those who presume to violate the two-child policy.

There is only one point on which Dr. Xiong is to be congratulated, namely, his candor. For his manipulative view of human reproduction, as well as his dream of a race of supermen, is shared by many, both inside and outside of China.

I propose that each woman will be allowed to give birth to a second child (and no more) in accord with China's existing controlled-birth policy. The first child can be born naturally. The second, however, will be encouraged to be a boy, with the help of modern medical knowledge and techniques.

This is neither pure controlled birth (since the first birth is natural), nor pure manmade disproportion (since at least one child per family will be born without choosing the sex), but a controlled disproportion, in which the excess males are equal to the number of the physically and mentally disabled, a proportion of about 10%.

Males are freely chosen by females, and 10% of them are not likely to find a wife. When they die, their bad genes are eliminated. In the next generation, there will be fewer child-bearing women. After two or three generations the population will go down sharply and the quality go up sharply. This accords with the existing birth control policy and the demands of the people to have sons. It fits the situation in China and avoids the disagreement among law, ethics and human rights.

With the increase of population the number of mentally disabled is increasing. These people can't create, but burden the family and the whole society as well. The defective genes of the disabled are carried down to the next generation. As a result, the absolute population quality can't be improved.

China's government asks parents to give birth only to well-developed children, but we are far from the goal. It is of great importance to lower the quantity and improve the quality, which has much to do with the prosperity of the Chinese people, the future of the human race, and the happiness of millions of families.

Modern civilizations also have negative effects on the question of population quality. In the past, medical conditions were very poor. Human society evolved according to Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest." The most weak and disabled children died before reaching reproductive age. But now, with superior medical techniques, they can survive and produce another generation. Unavoidably there will be a degeneration in human genes, which will result in the decrease of population quality.

In the history of human development, although there are marriages based on social factors, the majority of cases are decided by the ladies' choices based on the above conditions. In the pure feeling marriage, the couple must have certain qualities, otherwise there will be no feeling. For instance, those whose IQ is below 60 can't look after themselves; how can they love? [Emphasis added].

Human development has undergone several stages. There appeared the matriarchal society, which was replaced by the patriarchal society. It proves that there existed an inequality in the proportion of men and women several times in human development. The unstable proportion was mainly due to humanity's struggle against nature. We advocate control of the proportion of men and women by plan.

No woman at the first birth will be allowed to choose a boy or a girl. At the second birth she can give birth naturally or choose to have a boy. We should make out a suitable proportion, considering the number of the disabled and of premature deaths so that men at sexual maturity will be more numerous than women and equal to the proportion of the disabled.

Because there are more men than women, women will have great freedom in choosing men. Under the control of the monogamy law, there should be more than 10% men who would not be able to get a wife. There will exist a competition in which those men who are not capable will be eliminated.

Even if a low IQ woman will marry, as she give birth to boys, with the free choice of several generations the defective genes will be eliminated. Thus the quality of the nation, especially that based on genetics, will be increased.

The new birth theory will control gender ratio by plan. Since 10% of the nation's men will not be able to find a wife, these 500,000,000 men will not reproduce. After a life cycle 500,000,000 lives are eliminated.

In addition, since there are 250,000,000 women unborn, the unborn women will not give birth. If one woman can give birth to two children, 500,000,000 lives will not exist. By planned gender ratio, the population's increase rate will be slowed down, and the population's quality will be increased with the defective genes giving no birth. Throw one stone and kill two birds.

Someone will say that we are abolishing the law prohibiting low-IQ people from bearing children. Certainly it is very good to avoid these genes through legal methods. But it is very difficult to make the law.

There is no way to avoid fraud and deception without an authoritative method for grading the weak-minded. If the weak-minded are trained to take the IQ test, their IQ may seem to surpass that of normal people, rendering the test ineffective. It's hard, then, to determine who is mentally disabled.

Nowadays, our people haven't attained such a degree of ethics, as to persuade the weak-minded not to give birth. The ethics level remaining unimproved to some degree, the law (prohibiting their giving birth) won't work effectively. I think it is not the proper time to control birth and marriage of the weak-minded by ethical or legal methods.

While there are as many weak-minded men as women, they have no problem getting a wife or a husband. According to this theory, such weak-minded people will be eliminated by natural rule. This will eliminate discussion of the so-called human rights and human sins. [Emphasis added.]

Of course, once this new theory is adopted, there will be a disproportion of men and women, which will cause many social problems. If 10% of the male population can't find a spouse, chances are that there will be an increase in such problems as rape, violence and prostitution.

Even without this disproportion of the sexes, there also exist such problems, so that it is not the disproportion that brings them about. There may be an increase of such problems, but at the same time the society is developing and the legal system is being perfected so that such crimes will be prevented and won't lead to serious social problems.

The present one-birth policy is also not a perfect one. For example, there are many city families with better conditions and good heredity who can give birth to only one child. This leads to a comparative decrease in the proportion of better heredity. In the countryside some families give birth to two or more children. This brings an increase in the proportion of worse heredity.

This birth management theory is not immutable or frozen. With the development of human society, especially the development of productivity and the improvement of the economic level, people's view of reproduction will reach a certain stage.

At that time, the human race will find a new rule of self-adjustment. Maybe they will come back to natural birth. But for now, each couple giving birth to two babies can maintain the level of ZPG (Zero Population Growth). The world's population will thus remain a constant number.

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