Glamour
"Lakshmi Devi Rawat sits in the courtyard of her house in the village of Aoutri in northern India, amid a knot of children, relatives and neighbors, talking about her failure to give birth to a boy. "Whenever I had a girl, my husband's family would say, 'We will not keep you,'" says the attractive forty-one-year-old, shading her face with the end of her maroon and gold sair. Her in-laws were disappointed after her first daughter, but it was after the birth of her second that the pressure really began. Neighbors started bringing her homemade 'medicines' that they claimed would help her to conceive a boy. They didn't work: She gave birth to a third daughter. Then her relatives began ignoring her and calling her a kutiya (b***h); her fellow villagers began avoiding her. She got pregnant again and gave birth to a fourth daughter. This birth was viewed as an unmitigated disaster. "The whole family didn't eat for a week," she recalls.
Four more girls would have followed, except that they were never born. Each time thereafter, where Rawat got pregnant, her husband would send her to the barny town of Palwal, where for abotu $12 a doctor would give hr an ultrasound and, once determining that the fetus was a girl, a $35 abortion. Rawat had four such abortions over the next two years. "The doctor would say, 'You'll ruin your stomach,' but I didn't care," she says. "To my mind, it was better to die than to be under so much pressure from the community." Finally, Rawat gave birth to a boy, and instantly she was no longer the village pariah. "We threw a party, and the whole village ate," racalls Rawat's husband's uncle, Kake Singh, hunched on a stool nearby, before adding, "My wife had fifteen abortions, and now i Have six sons!"
"Now everyone talks to me," Rawat says contentedly, "My life has totally changed."
India has a long history of getting rid of unwanted baby girls. For centuries, midwives in parts of rural India have known how to kill a female newborn by forcing a taoxic amount of tobacco or salkt into her mouth. But over the past twenty years with the advent of ultrasounds, getting rid of girls before they're born, known as sex selection, has reached epidemic proportions. (Abortion has been legal in India since 1971.) By 2001, the national census showed that for everyone 1,000 boys six years old and under, there were only 927girls, down from 945 girls per thousand boys in 1991. (It doesn't sound huge, but it's statistically siesmic). In pockets of the country, the ratio became even more lopsided: A 2002 study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation found that in one area of Punjab, there were 628 girls for every 1,000 boys among children age six and under. "What we are seeing," says Delhi obstetrician-gynecologist Puneet Bedi, M.D., "is a genocide."
In India a boy is a source of future wealth and a status symbol-it is the son who lights his parents' funeral pyres in Hindu ceremonies-while a girl, by contrast, is often viewed as a liability. Sons traditionally inherit property, keeping it in the family, while daughters cost money by requiring a dowry when they get married. "Raising a daughter," goes the old Punjabi saying, "is like watering your neighbor's garden." During the 1980s medical clinics capitalized on this bias against girls, targeting nervous future parents with aggressive marketing campaigns that played on their fear of an expensive dowry. "Spend 500 Rupees now," one poster read, referring to the price of an abortion, "Save 50,000 rupees later." Finally, in 1994, the government passed a law forbidding doctors from telling patients the sex of a fetus. But since ultrasound scans are done behind closed doors, the law is basically unenforceable, and the practice continues to thrive. Doctors have found new codes to indicate the sex to mothers, rather then telling them outright. "Start shopping for blue," they hint. And should the fetus turn out to be a girl, getting it aborted is easy: "Abortions are widely available and are free in government hospitals. "There's no shame associated with abortion when you're getting rid of a pain in the a**--a girl," says Dr. Bedi furiously. "It's as normal as having a cup of coffee."
A study recently published in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates that over the past two decades, as many as ten million fetii have been aborted because their parents didn't want ot have a girl. And as the first generation of children born in the age of sex selection beings to reach adulthood, the effects of the lopsided ration in Inidia are becoming more pronounced-- and frightening. In the most uneven sex rations, young women are so scarce that trafficking brides for desperate bachelors has become big business. In Delhi, India's bustling capital, the streets and restaurants have become incresibly male-dominated, leading women to fear for their safety, say activists. What will things look like in 20 years?
Four more girls would have followed, except that they were never born. Each time thereafter, where Rawat got pregnant, her husband would send her to the barny town of Palwal, where for abotu $12 a doctor would give hr an ultrasound and, once determining that the fetus was a girl, a $35 abortion. Rawat had four such abortions over the next two years. "The doctor would say, 'You'll ruin your stomach,' but I didn't care," she says. "To my mind, it was better to die than to be under so much pressure from the community." Finally, Rawat gave birth to a boy, and instantly she was no longer the village pariah. "We threw a party, and the whole village ate," racalls Rawat's husband's uncle, Kake Singh, hunched on a stool nearby, before adding, "My wife had fifteen abortions, and now i Have six sons!"
"Now everyone talks to me," Rawat says contentedly, "My life has totally changed."
India has a long history of getting rid of unwanted baby girls. For centuries, midwives in parts of rural India have known how to kill a female newborn by forcing a taoxic amount of tobacco or salkt into her mouth. But over the past twenty years with the advent of ultrasounds, getting rid of girls before they're born, known as sex selection, has reached epidemic proportions. (Abortion has been legal in India since 1971.) By 2001, the national census showed that for everyone 1,000 boys six years old and under, there were only 927girls, down from 945 girls per thousand boys in 1991. (It doesn't sound huge, but it's statistically siesmic). In pockets of the country, the ratio became even more lopsided: A 2002 study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation found that in one area of Punjab, there were 628 girls for every 1,000 boys among children age six and under. "What we are seeing," says Delhi obstetrician-gynecologist Puneet Bedi, M.D., "is a genocide."
In India a boy is a source of future wealth and a status symbol-it is the son who lights his parents' funeral pyres in Hindu ceremonies-while a girl, by contrast, is often viewed as a liability. Sons traditionally inherit property, keeping it in the family, while daughters cost money by requiring a dowry when they get married. "Raising a daughter," goes the old Punjabi saying, "is like watering your neighbor's garden." During the 1980s medical clinics capitalized on this bias against girls, targeting nervous future parents with aggressive marketing campaigns that played on their fear of an expensive dowry. "Spend 500 Rupees now," one poster read, referring to the price of an abortion, "Save 50,000 rupees later." Finally, in 1994, the government passed a law forbidding doctors from telling patients the sex of a fetus. But since ultrasound scans are done behind closed doors, the law is basically unenforceable, and the practice continues to thrive. Doctors have found new codes to indicate the sex to mothers, rather then telling them outright. "Start shopping for blue," they hint. And should the fetus turn out to be a girl, getting it aborted is easy: "Abortions are widely available and are free in government hospitals. "There's no shame associated with abortion when you're getting rid of a pain in the a**--a girl," says Dr. Bedi furiously. "It's as normal as having a cup of coffee."
A study recently published in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates that over the past two decades, as many as ten million fetii have been aborted because their parents didn't want ot have a girl. And as the first generation of children born in the age of sex selection beings to reach adulthood, the effects of the lopsided ration in Inidia are becoming more pronounced-- and frightening. In the most uneven sex rations, young women are so scarce that trafficking brides for desperate bachelors has become big business. In Delhi, India's bustling capital, the streets and restaurants have become incresibly male-dominated, leading women to fear for their safety, say activists. What will things look like in 20 years?
Now 'scuse me while I go giggle fiendishly in the corner.
Haha. choice.
Okay, the article is actually longer. Another testimony, it talks a little about the trafficking, about how it's noticeable in public, increased instances of rape, and the onset of hope as awareness is being brought forth. So let's see what the hope of abortion has brought to the people of India:
-an imbalance of gender.
-bridal trafficking.
-female feticide (and the article actually reads that in a later part)
-rape
-yet another venue for a Black Market
The article speaks for itself, I have little to say about it other then this is part of the reality of "reproductive rights" it can be used against you. Just like the right to arms, the right to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and other other freedom granted to you.
I just see this as one more reason i'm pro-life, this is an attack on human life and human dignity on all fronts. It undermines fetal rights entirely, and it's also a blemish against women. As you read above, the Doctor specifically calls this "a genocide" and it's aimed at women.
I have respect for different cultures but I sometimes wonder where culture is just a matter of dressing and speaking differently, and a difference between the civilized, and the barbaric. These women apparently think what they're doing is good but ultimately they are making no "choice", just doing what they need to to survive. The circumstnaces being given are unfair. Not to mention, they're damaging the envirement by throwing the gender ratio: the article later reads about how on a College campus all the women rush off once class is through because they're so vastly outnumbered, they fear for themselves.
But the greatest reason why I posted this article is in response to the anti-adoption argument.
Likewise, where Americans want nice, healthy, white babies, Indians desire nice healthy, Indian boys. Here's the difference: in the Indian system no one gets left in the agency, they just get left in the trash. If you think the bias of adoption is a flaw that mucks the entire system over, then you must equally believe abortion is a pretty jaded buisness with this going on (and in more places then India. China anyone?))
Abortion is a means for more then just control over one's own body, it's also a means for controlling one's children. This is more about timing and envirement, it's about type. Perhaps you have a leg to stand on if you say you've aborted because you are incapable of supporting a child, but I think you're pretty much flailing in the dust if you abort because your kid wasn't a boy. And in the age of Spoiled, White Westerners, it's only a matter of time before Amercan Children become as selected as handbags.
And as glittery...
