The three most dangerous words in the world today are "It’s a
girl." Sex-selective abortion considers the lives of the youngest of
females to be without worth or value. Sex-selective abortion is
gender based violence against the most defenseless of girls. The
practice of targeting girls for death—gendercide or femicide—and
killing them through sex-selective abortion and infanticide has led
to 160 million ‘missing girls’ in Asia and a growing
disproportionate ratio of girls to boys in affected countries.
Cultural preferences for boys and technology have come together to
make the womb the most dangerous place for girls on earth,
particularly in China and India. Ultrasound and sex-determination
testing identify the girl in the womb and preferences for first-born
sons render baby girls unwanted, marked for death simply because
they are female. The one-child population control policy in China
and the dowry system in India exacerbate the violence and
discrimination against girls.
While sex-selective abortion occurs most frequently in Asian
countries, it was exported from the United States as a means of
population control. Mara Hvistendahl explains in her ground breaking
book, Unnatural Selection:
Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World
Full of Men, that the practice of sex selective abortion was proposed
in 1969 by the Population Council as a relatively "ethical" means to
control population:
"By August 1969, when the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the
Population Council convened another workshop on population control,
sex selection had become a pet scheme....Sex selection, moreover,
had the added advantage of reducing the number of potential
mothers....if a reliable sex determination technology could be made
available to a mass market,'' there was "rough consensus'' that sex
selection abortion "would be an effective, uncontroversial and
ethical way of reducing the global population.''
Matthew J. Connelly, Ph.D., Professor, Columbia University,
author of Fatal
Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population,
testified before a U.S. House hearing that Planned Parenthood's head
of research, Steven Polgar, promoted the idea of sex selective
abortion urging biologists to develop a technique for pre-natal sex
determination.
The scheme 'worked'. Today there are fewer girls-fewer future
mothers-where sex-selective abortion was promoted. However, as the
first generation affected by sex selection matures into adults,
there are dire consequences as tens of millions of men cannot find
wives leading to increased sex trafficking and forced bride selling;
populations are aging with few daughters and daughters-in-law to
care for elderly family members and there are fewer workers
resulting in unprecedented challenges for governments.
PNCI believes that the life of the girl child must be valued right
from the start-in the womb-if her life is to be respected and
protected throughout the life cycle. PNCI seeks to raise awareness
of the practice of sex-selective abortion and supports legislation
that bans this cruel, violent and destructive act of discrimination.
PNCI opposes all cultural practices which harm and devalue the life
of the girl child.
Links:
All Girls Allowed
http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/
Congressional Hearing: India's Missing Girls
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-hearing-indias-missing-girls
Invisible Girl Project
http://invisiblegirlproject.org/
Report: Power, Voice and Rights A Turning Point for Gender
Equality in Asia and the Pacific
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/regional/asiathepacific/RHDR-2010-AsiaPacific.pdf
Protect Our Girls
http://protectourgirls.com/learn/
Women's Rights Without
Frontiers
http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=congressional
The war on baby girls:
Gendercide
http://www.economist.com/node/15606229
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