Re: g_b India 'loses 10m female births'

[MyOnePenny]

Manan -   Both female foeticide and female infanticide push India to the very far reaches of barbarity in the modern world...the generally published numbers that I have seen over the last year indicate that 40 million Indian women are not alive today...women who by simple statistics should be current citizens of India..   Most countries do not have 40 million citizens total...this barbaric treatment of women is the equivalent of killing all the people in Canada or Australia or Belgium or the Ivory Coast...if this inhumane activity is not stopped I expect that India will become a pariah worse than Cambodia or Hilter's Germany to most of the rest of the modern world over the next few years...especially with the current speed of communications throughout the world...your enclosed story is less than a week old and I can guarantee you that people are already ridiculing India in all corners of the world because of it..   In the USA for decades there has been a very strong debate of the appropriateness of abortion (foeticide)...the debate is focused on whether a women has a right to terminate an unwanted birth...and is based primarily on the woman's right to protect herself and her life..   If it was found that foeticide was being used specifically to kill female embryos as happens consistently in India then I can easily imagine the National Organization of Women reformulating much of their stance on abortion..   For me as a Transgendered westerner in India female foeticide and female infanticide as well as the general  disenfranchisement of women in society are the most unsettling aspects of life in the sub-continent..   These aspects are even more unsettling to me than the abuse of the hijara/eunuch population...for without women's rights to live equitably in India it is foolish to think that anyone so unusual as a Transgendered person would be accorded equality ..   Elizabeth   In a message dated 1/9/2006 9:46:47 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4592890.stm     More than 10m female births in India may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years, according to medical research.   Researchers in India and Canada for the Lancet journal said prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girls a year. Their research was based on a national survey of 1.1m households in 1998. The researchers said the "girl deficit" was more common among educated women but did not vary according to religion. The unusual gender balance in India has been known about for some time. In most countries, women slightly outnumber men, but separate research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.     Ultrasound The latest research is by Prabhat Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in Chandigarh, India. They found that there was an increasing tendency to select boys when previous children had been girls. The sex ratio is so skewed in some states, men cannot find brides In cases where the preceding child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys in the next birth was 759 to 1,000. This fell even further when the two preceding children were both girls. Then the ratio for the third child born was just 719 girls to 1,000 boys. However, for a child following the birth of a male child, the gender ratio was roughly equal. Prabhat Jha said conservative estimates in the research suggested half a million girls were being lost each year. "If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10m missing female births would not be unreasonable."     'Shameful' Sex selective abortions have been banned in India for more than a decade. Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors. It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm. The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially.   The BBC's Jill McGivering says the problem is complicated by advances in technology. Ultrasound machines must be officially registered but many are now so light and portable, they are hard to monitor. Although doctors in India must not tell couples the sex of a foetus, in practice, some just use coded signals instead, our correspondent says. Last year the well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh, began a campaign across five northern and western states against female foeticide. "There's no other form of violence that's more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful," he said.   =================   Group Site: http://www.gaybombay.info ========================== This message was posted to the gay_bombay Yahoo! Group. Responses to messages (by clicking "Reply") will also be posted on the eGroup and sent to all members. If you'd like to respond privately to the author of any message then please compose and send a new email message to the author's email address. 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