Gender abortions in India

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Sorry for the numerous posts today, but I keep finding interesting articles.

In India, it is illegal for a doctor to reveal the sex of a baby because of the risk of an abortion if it’s a girl:

Indians crack down on gender abortions

After 12 years on the books, a law meant to curb sex-selective abortions gets its first conviction.

Christian Science Monitor Article
 
Thats good news (-:

PS Don’t apologise for posting (unless you post something offensive) - there are several people on this forum who have more than 10,000 posts. 23 posts is nothin 2 worry about, especially when you bring us good news like this.
 
Thanks for your kind words.

One thing I find interesting about the article is that women’s rights groups are driving this change. The interests of women appear to play out differently in this context – from concern over reproductive rights to survival on a large scale.
 
I agree. Despite the fact that I am technically pro choice, I believe, after conducting research on this issue for a project, and reading about it, that sex selective abortions are wrong.
 
What I find surprising is that the educated women in urban environments in India seem to make the same decision regarding having boys. I can understand why poor women in rural India would make that decision. Given the poor care that girl children tend to get and the bullying by husband’s family, being virtually sold into marriage I can see why a woman could argue that the kindest thing she can do to her girl child is to abort her (and I’ve read interviews where rural poor Indian women have essentially said just this thing). And abortion, from what I understand, isn’t really causing this. Prior to sex selective abortion they would simply drop the girl children into wells or leave them out for the wild animals (maybe in some cases smother or drug them to death first out of kindness).

I would think that at some point in time, brides would be so scarce that women’s position would be strengthened and they would be able to marry up and not have to worry about the dowry. If that ever happens then an equilibrium would have been reached and sex selective abortions shouldn’t be so common anymore. If that equilibrium point is never reached then India will get less and less populous each generation or they will need to import women from Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka…
 
One of the related articles mentioned at the bottom of that page points out that sex-selective abortions are actually more common among educated women than the poor and uneducated. One possible explanation is that educated, well-off women have bigger dowries and that increases the incentive to abort. Plus, I imagine poorer women are more likely to resort to the methods of infanticide you mention rather than pay for an abortion.
 
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St.Sharky:
I agree. Despite the fact that I am technically pro choice, I believe, after conducting research on this issue for a project, and reading about it, that sex selective abortions are wrong.
Click to expand...
Why? Not to be argumentative, but what difference does it make if you are doing it for convenience or for sex selection? Killing a baby is killing a baby.

Also, don’t kid yourself. That is happening here in the US as well.

Peace

Tim
 
If it is happening in the US on a wide scale then it must be that about 1/2 of the people aborting want girls and the other half boys. The reason why everyone knows this is going on in India and China is because the birth statistics are so obviously skewed. Here in the states, the birth rate is about what you would expect for boys and girls. Not to say that some couples won’t do this, but it is not tilted quite to the extent it is there.

They’ve been talking about a spermicide for some time now that could kill only the y carrying sperm or only the x carrying sperm. If they could develop such a thing, I would imagine it would become the preferred method. Stills skews the balance and plays bl**dy heck with nature, but prolly preferable to abortion. And some families have understandable needs for avoiding one gender or the other (mainly I’m thinking of the genetic diseases that are carried on the X and so affect boys (not having an extra X to block).
 
Just have a look at his previous posts in similar topics. My understanding is that Sharky doesn’t believe abortion is wrong in all cases that the Church would say it is wrong in. I think I’ve read him saying abortion is okay in the case of rape? Basically, take the label he gives himself at face value.
 
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