Posted 1:50 PM
by Mary
India PM calls aborted fetuses shameful
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ –
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's widespread practice of aborting female fetuses is a "national shame," the prime minister said Monday, insisting the country can no longer ignore the problem if it wants to be a modern nation.
Experts say up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted in India every year because of a deep-rooted cultural preference for male children, who will help support their parents in old age and attract wives with substantial dowries.
"This is a national shame and we must face this challenge squarely here and now," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a conference on ways to "Save the girl child."
"No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilized world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women," Singh said.
The British medical journal The Lancet recently reported that up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted every year.
Singh said the number of girls per 1,000 boys declined nationally from 962 in 1981 to just 927 in the last census in 2001. Activists believe the problem has become even worse since the census.
The gap in the ratio between girls and boys is more extreme in wealthier urban areas where couples want fewer children and the pressure to produce a male increases. In the northern state of Punjab, there were only 798 girls for every 1,000 boys, Singh said.
For a recent report, the group ActionAid sent interviewers to 6,000 households in five north Indian regions. In Punjab, researchers found rural areas with just 500 girls for every 1,000 boys, and communities of high-caste urbanites with just 300 girls per 1,000.
Labels: Gender, India, infanticide
