Peter Hitchens, reporter, wrote this article in the Daily Mail [UK] -- the article details not only the shortage of girls in the population, due to China's "one child per family" policy, but it also goes in to detail re: China's increasing problem of child theft.
The article starts:
"In the cruel old China, baby girls were often left to die in the gutters. In the cruel modern China, they are aborted by the tens of millions, using all the latest technology.
There is an ugly new word for this mass slaughter: gendercide."
The article states that China's one-child-policy started officially in 1979.
However, I personally remember that in at least parts of China as early as 1974, the government was encouraging/enforcing this. I remember that in Fall of 1974 when I was a college Freshman, writing an essay about the policy for an English class I was taking at the time. IT was the first I'd heard of it.
Unfortunately, in large parts of India, parents are also chosing gendercide. Not through goverment threats, but of their own volition. Quite some time ago, I'd seen a TV documentary which covered the phemomenon. Sleezy abortion doctors in their Mercedes Benz cars, pulling out their scanners in poor neighborhoods for relatively quite handsome fees to tell parents what sex the baby was -- then parents aborting if it was a girl.
There is also this article which is worth a read -- it goes into more details about India and China. [And it also confirms my 1974 date as to when the use of amniocentisis began to be used for this purpose of sex selection and gendercide.]
And there is also a recent article from the Economist, which points out that often the WORST gender imblance is in the WEALTHY parts of the country.
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2 comments:
The one child policy just makes me shudder. Pope Paul in his encyclical Humane Vitae said that if contraception became accepted around the world that Govt could tell families how many children they are allowed to have and I guess it has come true.
In fact pre-birth determination of the sex of a baby is illegal in India; which doesn't, of course, stop it happening.
The problem with having in girl child in India - apart from the religious implications (in Hindiusm, at least) - is a very simple one : cost. A daughter means - in due course - a wedding; and a wedding can literally mean financial ruin for a not-rich (notice I don't say poor) family.
A 'village' wedding can easily cost well over a year's gross income for the bride's whole family; and in an agricultural society with scant savings and backup resources, that is appalling - and two or three daughters obviously makes the problem insoluble.
Ultimately, until something can be done about the cultural implications, India will continue to see the genocidal destruction of female babies - and the tragedy is that there's nothing anyone can do about it except pray.
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