Different opportunities are available for sex selection in the world including selective abortion, pre-fertilization sperm separation, or post-fertilization but pre-implantation diagnosis of sex thereby choosing the sex. In certain cultures, these options are viewed as very important and have led to great disparity in the overall sex ratio. Specifically, the Indian culture has shown a rural as well as urban preference for male children. Suburban sexism generally relates to the family business/lifestyle being much more profitable if a son is involved. Also, sons can care for their parents much more easily in old age than daughters. Urban sexism can easily arise when daughters are viewed as burdens because dowries must be paid. Because of these views, many female fetuses have been aborted in India forcing the Prime Minister to call the epidemic a “national shame” that needs to be regulated in order to save these unwanted daughters.
The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, made these comments while addressing the statistic that in 1981, there were 962 women to every 1000 men and in 2001, the number had decreased to 927. An estimate shows that as many as 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in the 20 year period from 1981 to 2001. Because of this change, India has made it illegal for pregnant women to be given the sex of their fetus because of the fear of selective abortions. This means that the availability of ultrasounds, since they are so affordable and available, should be declining in the future to help India’s overall sex ratio. Specifically, in order to be able to have an ultrasound, a pregnant woman must agree to not seek the seek the sex of the fetus while the ultrasound is occurring. Also, doctors that still disclose the sex of the fetus are liable for up to five years in prison. However, these law are not strictly enforced, leading many doctors and patients to blatantly ignore the law and the possible penalties.
While this epidemic still occurs, it is difficult to come to an overall solution while the current regulations are not being enforced. After their enforcement takes place, the entire scenario will have a dramatic change. However, as many have noted, this sex selection problem is most obvious in the upper-class part of the Indian culture. Therefore, even if India enforces its current regulations, these upper-class citizens may seek refuge in order countries with much looser regulations like the U.S. So in the end, what is the solution? The overall solution may be to have a global policy against selective abortions. However, sex-selection abortions are only part of the problem and that means that the overall question is much larger than simply regulating sex selection in the U.S. Selective abortions also deal with genetic defects and chromosomal defects. Weighing these extra issues into the equation means that the problem is that much more unclear. However, sex selection may be regulated beyond these other issues. Hopefully India can enforce a regulation that fixes their current sex-ratio problem, but this solution may involve other countries backing India in order for the regulation to be enforced.
3 comments:
I wrote my paper in the Comparative Law: India class on the trafficking of girl children and the patriarchal mindset in India. Also, being Indian, I have seen first hand both ends of the spectrum in regard to girls. On one hand, middle to upper classes have come to cherish their daughters as much as their sons. They are not seen as liabilities, but rather as beloved children, who are to be educated and raised to believe such.
On the other hand, I have also seen what lack of education and poverty can do to people, even to parents. Drug addiction often lead fathers to sell their daughters to traffickers in order to support their habit. Sexual abuse by family members and family friends leave young girls "untouchable" in the sense that they are unclean and no longer able to be married off. The need for physical labor leaves no time for education.
However, there are many organizations, such as Parivartan, which is run by the Delhi police commissioner, and Swanchetan, which has such contributors as Bill and Melinda Gates, that are currently changing the patriarchal mindset and rehabilitating these girls. Schools, psychotherapy, and job training for positions with Microsoft are just the beginning of this rehabilitation. The insertion of female police officers into small towns, performances in the poorest neighborhoods of dance-dramas depicting how to spot sexual preditors, and the beginning zero-tolerance policies have dramatically lowered the percentage of trafficked and abused girls.
Unfortunately, as you point out, the advent of ultrasounds has aided a new form of female child abuse, albeit prenatal. I do not think the patriarchal mindset will change anytime soon, but it is growing awareness and activity that will slowly but surely help to be a solution.
I think the most interesting statistic here is that it is the rich and educated who are more often performing sex selective abortions in India. It indicates that the laws are not effective in deterring those who can pay for the expensive (and illegal since 1994) ultrasound technology. Furthermore, it appears that the doctors engaging in sex selective abortions are not getting caught. According to Washington Post Article Abortion in India: Selection by Gender (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901219.html) only one doctor in Punjab, the state with the largest population gap between boys and girls, has actually been convicted of performing a sex-selective abortion in the last four years. The shocking part was that, although his license was suspended for five years, he was fined a mere $10.
However, it also looks like India is making a lot of progress in certain cities and the mindset of the country is beginning to change. For example, in a small village in central Punjab called Kajampur, girls and boys have been born in equal numbers for several years. Furthermore, India is educating students in high school and college (including a College for Girls in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab) to reject old ideas about male superiority. It seems like the mentality is now changing so that younger generations are viewing females as equally capable as males. Also, it probably helps that the ideas of dowries and “carrying on the family name” aren’t as prevalent as they once were in India.
Another example of sexual selection in India can been seen with the birth of intersexual infants. Intersexual infants are babies born with genitalia so ambiguous that the babies' parents and physician must choose what sex to assign upon the birth certificate. (In addition, to a series of sexual assignment procedures).
According to an Indian Medical School study (albeit from 1994), Indian parents typically prefer to rear intersex children as male. The study suggests that this preference may be because there is less of a social stigma in India attached to an impotent male than there is for a sterile female. Consequently, there are social factors driving this specific decision that distinguish it from that of the female abortion epidemic posted by TJ.
Nevertheless, the study also noted that males’ social independence is likely to be a variable in the parent's decision making as well-- thus highlighting the cultural underpinnings behind the female abortion epidemic.
On the other hand, as I noted, the survey is from 1994. I do hope current data would instead support Amy's evidence that the trend in India is toward views of sexual equality.
http://64.233.179.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:ZYYnp7ObRXAJ:indianpediatrics.net/june1995/666.pdf
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