Selective abortion in India could lead to 6.8m fewer girls being born by 2030

[BurningBright]

Guardian article: www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/21/selective-abortion-in-india-could-lead-to-68m-fewer-girls-being-born-by-2030

There are already an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births worldwide each year because of selective abortion.

Amazing how everyone seems to know the difference between boys and girls when it comes to aborting female foetuses. And long before they get 'assigned female at birth'.

My oldest child is now 23. When I was pregnant with her, I had all my antenatal appointments in a hospital in an area of England with a big Indian population.

The hospital's policy was not to tell parents the sex of their unborn baby. One of the reasons was because parents often sued if they got it wrong. The other was because of the number of abortions of female foetuses.

I have no idea whether the hospital still has the same policy, but more parents these days seem to find out the sex of their baby in advance, so I suspect the danger is still there.

The skewed male/female ratios in some parts of India are already very stark. Women are “imported” and trafficked to marry men in regions where they have no shared language or culture. It’s not new - this story is from 2011.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13331808

As infants, girls are deliberately given less to eat or less nutritious food, while their brothers are allowed bigger and better portions, given milk etc. So many girls are chronically malnourished.

Pretty recently I read an update on an Indian couple who had spent their life savings on IVF in their 70s because they were desperate for a son (they had adult daughters and grandchildren). They had boy/girls twins but the girl mysteriously died in infancy. I remember thinking... what a surprise 😔

@user1471448556

Women are so screwed over. I thought there was some kind of realisation of the issues in India when that poor woman was gang raped and murdered on a bus? What happened to the momentum after that?

There have been more shocking gang rapes and murders since then. I think there have been lots of protests, activism, programmes to engage with communities and change societal views. Lots of people in India understand the issues and want change, but in a country with more than a billion people, it's difficult to gain substantial traction in a short amount of time. You need strong governance too, but that's missing as well.

Fifthtimelucky I hope they still have the policy and haven't abandoned it out of some stupid notion of not wanting to be 'racist' because it's targeted at a certain ethnic minority.

Haworthia what an awful story.