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India's deadly secret


dawn9476

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That's exactly what happens when a society favors males so much. How many breeding mares do you need, anyway?

I hate how pro-lifers bring up abortions in India and China as examples of why abortion is wrong. They completely miss the friggin' point- that society values women so little and gives them almost nothing, so parents get rid of female children any way they can. That's why sex-selective abortion is wrong. And that's the kind of society fundies want, where women have no education, no control over their own lives, all they do is breed! :x

And then there's way more males than females...

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That's exactly what happens when a society favors males so much. How many breeding mares do you need, anyway?

I hate how pro-lifers bring up abortions in India and China as examples of why abortion is wrong. They completely miss the friggin' point- that society values women so little and gives them almost nothing, so parents get rid of female children any way they can. That's why sex-selective abortion is wrong. And that's the kind of society fundies want, where women have no education, no control over their own lives, all they do is breed! :x

And then there's way more males than females...

What is also sick and hypocritical of the pro-life crowd is that they still support GOP politicians, who make it easier for American corporations to ship our jobs to India. We are sending our jobs to men who would most likely force their wives to have a sex-selective abortion if she gets pregnant with a girl.

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What can you do if a culture wants to dig it's own grave? Not enough girls being born now means not enough babies being born in the future (at replacement level) period.

I just worry about how the girls that are born and grow up will be treated. Will they be forced/pressured into having as many babies as they can? Take more then one husband?

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My hope (this may never happen but I can dream) is that maybe this will make the lives of the women who exist more valuable.

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I actually don't have a problem with sex-selective abortion. It's much better than being born and then abandoned to die, sold into slavery, or outright murdered.

Sexism is a huge problem. Getting rid of sex-selective abortion won't solve that problem. I don't see how it benefits anyone at all for parents to be forced to have a child they don't want (for any reason) and for a child to born into a home where she will always be resented and hated by her own family.

I also wouldn't call this a dirty little secret, since it's been pretty well-known for a long time.

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I also want to add that there are some complex issues with this. It might seem good at first because fewer women means that the population won't grow so fast. It also seems like women could end up being more valued if they are rare. But what it really ends up leading to is women becoming a scarce commodity like livestock. It leads to more sex slavery, forced prostitution, selling of daughters to higher castes, importing women (sometimes against their will) from neighboring countries or regions, and even more kidnapping and rape because you have a culture where men feel entitled to women. Women, girls actually, will end up being sold to the highest bidder. The poorest men who can't afford to buy a wife will still feel entitled and it could lead to more crime and riots.

So yeah, the sex imbalance is definitely a big problem. But no, forcing people to have kids they don't want will not solve that problem.

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I actually don't have a problem with sex-selective abortion. It's much better than being born and then abandoned to die, sold into slavery, or outright murdered.

Sexism is a huge problem. Getting rid of sex-selective abortion won't solve that problem. I don't see how it benefits anyone at all for parents to be forced to have a child they don't want (for any reason) and for a child to born into a home where she will always be resented and hated by her own family.

I also wouldn't call this a dirty little secret, since it's been pretty well-known for a long time.

This is a good point. I don't know how to feel about sex-selective abortion, I'm very pro-choice otherwise, but you have a good point. The only way to stop sex-selective abortion, as well as sex-selective infanticide, is to get rid of the sexism leading up to those. Banning abortion just means finding more babies in the river. Or in someone's closet stabbed to death, which I know has happened here in the US (though not because the baby was a girl). People are going to get rid of fetuses and infants in any way they can, and nobody in the US can be stupid enough to assume there's a loving home for each and every child born to parents who didn't want them.

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I remember two stories--one is from China about how they ban telling parents what the gender of their child is going to be, to prevent sex-selective abortions. So they're working on that. The other story was a renaming ceremony for India's "unwanted" girls. So many girls there have Indian names that means "unwanted," which is a terrible blow to their psyches, growing up "unwanted." So, a group put on a renaming ceremony where the girls chose their new names.

Sadly, I can't remember where I read these stories...curse my news junkie-ness.

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I think you, or someone at least, posted the link about the renaming of Indian girls who were renamed because their names indicated their unwantedness.

I see the selective abortion as a by-product of patriarchy, not as a by-product of feminism. I blame the patriarchy. They don't consider girls equal to boys, that is the problem.

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Yes, it's an issue in China too.

I agree that the abortions are a symptom of a large problem, which includes infanticide, abandonment and differential treatment of female children.

I wonder how the situation will be in 20 years? There is already a significant gender imbalance in some areas. It can go 2 ways - and possibly both scenarios may play out.

Scenario 1 - With girls being increasingly scarce, boys are no longer in a position to demand substantial dowries and many just hope to find a bride. Once married, they become less willing to tolerate mistreatment from a nasty mother-in-law and may want to stay closer to their own families. The economic incentive for favoring boys over girls disappears.

Scenario 2 - In poorer areas, the men worry that they won't be able to compete for a bride, so they resort to buying or kidnapping one. (Jan Wong describes this happening in some parts of China in her book "Red China Blues".) Meanwhile, poor families may no longer kill off daughters, but will see girl babies as a commodity.

There is also scenario 3 - globalization and cultural changes making extreme sexism more taboo. Consider this:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/11/02/ ... ily-oster/

The thesis is that something as simply as watching TV may have shown a world with more equality.

India is a rapidly developing country, where you have this mix of extreme poverty and a growing middle-class. I wonder if things will change if Western cultural imports and contact with Western business people show sexism as a source of shame?

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You know what the answer is to lowering an incidence of abortion, right?

FEMINISM.

- Validating women and girls as equals will decrease the likelihood of female infanticide and abortion.

- Empowering women to make their own reproductive choices will mean that far more women will use other means of birth control and family planning.

Sometimes it really is that simple. And that makes it doubly tragic.

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Sexism is a huge problem. Getting rid of sex-selective abortion won't solve that problem. I don't see how it benefits anyone at all for parents to be forced to have a child they don't want (for any reason) and for a child to born into a home where she will always be resented and hated by her own family.

Exactly. Aborted baby girls or unwanted baby girls, the problem is giving the baby worth depending on gender. Has nothing to do with abortion, an unwanted child is an unwanted child.

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It's already coming back to haunt them.

I read an article last year which stated that there IS a shortage of young women in India. The generation of babies born when ultrasound became widely available has reached the age of marriage. One older man was quoted saying his son "might have to take the snaggle-toothed bride" because there weren't many women to choose from ?!?!?!

The article also stated that once ultrasound technology progressed to the point where results were accurate, every village, even the poorest ones had access to an ultrasound machine specifically to check the sex of the babies. Apparently, ultrasound for the sole purpose of ascertaining the gender has been outlawed, but there will always be ways around that.

Sorry for no link, but I read this quite a while ago.

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