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Gendercide and the Missing Girls of India

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Posted on May 29, 2011
Flickr / gustaffo89

Shy Indian girls pose for a camera.

A study of the 2011 Indian census suggests that rising wealth and literacy rates are encouraging newly middle- and upper-class parents to abort their unborn daughters, as sons can be relied upon to inherit property and carry on the family name.

Normally, slightly more males are born than females, with a ratio of 105 boys to 100 girls. However, India’s 2011 census found a ratio of just 96 girls for every 105 boys, as well as about 7 million fewer girls than boys under the age of 6, up from a gap of about 6 million girls a decade ago. Worried officials have attempted to limit sex-selective abortions by making it illegal for couples to use ultrasound screenings or other technology to decide whether to abort a female fetus, but the effort has been largely unsuccessful. —ARK

The New York Times:

India’s increasing wealth and improving literacy are apparently contributing to a national crisis of “missing girls,” with the number of sex-selective abortions up sharply among more affluent, educated families during the past two decades, according to a new study.

The study found the problem of sex-selective abortions of girls has spread steadily across India after once being confined largely to a handful of conservative northern states. Researchers also found that women from higher-income, better-educated families were far more likely than poorer women to abort a girl, especially during a second pregnancy if the firstborn was a girl.

... The study, being published in the British medical journal The Lancet, is the latest evidence of India’s worsening imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls. The 2011 Indian census found 914 girls for every 1,000 boys among children 6 six or younger, the lowest ratio of girls since the country gained independence in 1947. The new study estimated that 4 million to 12 million selective abortions of girls have occurred in India in the past three decades.

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By Artful Dodger, May 30, 2011 at 7:57 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I wish Israel could be just another country. Note that the Irish don’t have a political action committee to lobby Congress. We don’t have Tibetans asking for military aid against the Chinese. I have no ill feeling toward Israelis. They have nukes so they should be able to take care of themselves. I would like to regard the violations of Palestinian rights as just another unfortunate hot spot of injustice like that of the hostility between Eritreans and Ethiopians without that pesky foreign aid issue. We would not have to fund the Israeli government in a perfect world, and the US could vote any way it wished in the UN. It would just be another tsk, tsk provoker in the world news. I want to let Israel leave the nest as a free and wild bird of prey just like any other nation state. I’m sure the UK and the Commonwealth will be able to offer passports as it was once a British territory. That would only be right. I don’t see this as a radical idea, because the US is going bankrupt anyway. Should we reserve the last bricks in Fort Know for aid to Israel? MR. IHT and his fellows are always free to form an Israeli aid society that would rely on private donations. I see nothing wrong with that. The Irish had been doing that sort of thing for years for Northern Ireland. I feel that would perfectly reasonable, n’est-ce pas?

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By berniem, May 30, 2011 at 11:46 am Link to this comment

Perhaps “The World’s Largest Democracy” should utilize some of it’s growing wealth to educate it’s masses as to the threat of overpopulation and the wisdom of birth control despite the threats from the religious lunatic fringe which always holds sway over the poor and uneducated. I fear, however, that India is modeling itself after the “greed is good” US of A and like us, doesn’t give a damn about those lesser people unless they can be made profitable!

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By Jim, May 29, 2011 at 11:31 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

In real-world thinking, China’s one-child-only policy is possibly one of the most mankind-friendly steps any nation on earth has taken since the dawn of the industrial age.  While I’m definitely not promoting abortion as a birth-control method, I can’t emphasize enough the urgency in reducing not only the growth rate of the world population, but the world population itself.  If it were something that could actually be done and also adequately policed, I would urge a one-child-only population measures worldwide.  While economies would no longer grow, but have to find their own sustainability, that economic damage would probably not compare to the personal and economic damage that will be done in the course of the same next 4 or 5 generations to unfortunate homo sapiens trying to stay alive while global overheating decimates the human race and countless other species as collateral damage.

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By Inherit The Wind, May 29, 2011 at 9:40 pm Link to this comment

Since it’s not about Palestinians being mis-treated by Israelis, none of the phony humanity-loving “progressives” gives a shit about what is happening to girls in India.

Something similar has been going on in China since they implemented draconian population controls with the “only one child” policy.  In nations where girls’ jobs are solely to grow up to be house-keepers, bed-warmers and baby-makers, boys are prized above all.

Naturally after all these years there is now a shortage of marriageable aged women in both nations.  Free-marketeers would think that this would mean that MEN would now have to have to bring a dowry to “buy” wives as the highest bidder but it hasn’t worked out that way.  In China, rural families have taken the old barbarian way: stage a raid and STEAL the women for your young men.

Such a great country!

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By Artful Dodger, May 29, 2011 at 3:42 pm Link to this comment
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A lot of poor boy East Indians are going have to go gay, transgender or emigrate. This can’t good news for the rest of the world as women will become exploitable commodities for the birth dearth in Asia. It’s paradoxical that women should be treated more shabbily as their numbers decrease. Instead of being treated like gold they are hunted like white rhinos. Just take the ‘r’ from dearth and you get death.

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