FEMALE FOETICIDE AND DISCRIMINATION

 (All facts were obtained from Wikipedia and not made up and the facts are copied from there.)

                          FEMALE FOETICIDE AND DISCRIMINATION

India has always been thought as the country were sex-selective abortion is prominent. It is the place where females are considered trivial in comparison of males and are killed when they are just a foetus. It happens due the fact that a certain but a big portion of people, believe females to be inferior to males and would not be able carry their lineage forward. We are considered to discriminate by gender even in today’s “modern” time. In addition’ these thoughts are of the very people that live in this country but is it the only place such vile practice happens?

The answer is no that might seem like an untruthful answer to many but is the reality that maybe most people will not know about. In countries like the Republic of China, Pakistan, USA, Southeast Europe and other countries where such practice do transpire.

In China, before the one-child policy was introduced people would continue to have kids until they would have a son. Roughly, 27% of women have abortion and if the first-born was a girl, 92% of known female would-be second born foetuses were aborted. In 2005, 1.1 million of excess males were born in China. Many males between the ages of 28 and 49 are unable to find a partner and thus remain unmarried. Currently, the gap between male-to-female birth ratios in China has decreased to 117 males born for every 100 females. The government has enacted policies to reduce the sex ratio at birth and in 2005 sex-selective abortion was made illegal but still such practice does occur.

According to Eurostat and birth record data over 2008-2011, the birth sex ratios of Albania and Montenegro are currently 112 and 110 respectively. In recent years, the birth registration data for Macedonia and Kosovo indicate birth sex ratios above 108; for example, in 2011 the birth sex ratio was 108 in Macedonia, while in 2010 the birth sex ratio for Kosovo was 112. Scholars claim this suggests that sex-selective abortions are becoming common in southeast Europe.

Like in other countries, sex-selective abortion is difficult to track in the United States because of lack of data. The majority of people do not practice sex-selective abortion but there is a trend towards male preference. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, if they were only allowed to have one child, 40% of respondents said they would prefer a boy, while only 28% preferred a girl. When told about prenatal sex selection techniques such as sperm sorting and in vitro fertilization embryo selection, 40% of Americans surveyed thought that picking embryos by sex was an acceptable manifestation of reproductive rights. These selecting techniques are available at about half of American fertility clinics, as of 2006.

A 2013 study by John Bongaarts based on surveys in 61 major countries calculates the sex ratios that would result if parents had the number of sons and daughters they want. In 35 countries, claims Bongaarts, the desired birth sex ratio in respective countries would be more than 110 boys for every 100 girls if parents in these countries actually get a gender what they hope for (higher than India’s, which The Economist claims is 108).

Abnormal sex ratios at birth, possibly explained by growing incidence of sex-selective abortion, have also been noted in some other countries outside South and East Asia. According to the 2011 CIA World Factbook, countries with more than 110 males per 100 females at birth also include Albania and former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. A 2005 study estimated that over 90 million females were "missing" from the expected population in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan alone, and suggested that sex-selective abortion plays a role in this deficit. India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists believe eight million female fetuses may have been aborted between 2001 and 2011.

Sex-selection practices also occur among some South Asian immigrants in the United States: A study of the 2000 United States Census observed definite male bias in families of Chinese, Korean and Indian immigrants, which was getting increasingly stronger in families where first one or two children were female. In those families where the first two children were girls, the sex ratio of the third child was observed to be 1.51:1 in favor of boys.

The idea of “missing women” was first suggested by Amartya Sen, one of the first scholars to study high sex ratios and their causes globally, in 1990. In order to illustrate the gravity of the situation, he calculated the number of women that were not alive because of sex-selective abortion or discriminatory practices. He found that there were 11 percent fewer women than there “should” have been, if China had the natural sex ratio. This figure, when combined with statistics from around the world, led to a finding of over 100 million missing women. In other words, by the early 1990s, the number of missing women was “larger than the combined casualties of all famines in the twentieth century” (Sen 1990).

In South Korea and Taiwan, high male sex ratios and declining birth rates over several decades have led to cross-cultural marriage between local men and foreign women from countries such as mainland China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. However, sex-selective abortion is not the only cause of this phenomenon; it is also related to migration and declining fertility.

So this goes on to show that only India does not take part in such an ill-advised practice but also citizens of other countries also do so. This article is not an attempt to make it seem like Indians can be excused for taking part in this practice but to have a narrow viewpoint on such topic is also not correct.