A Woman's Worth

1 million females a year disappear in a country of over a billion people.

Gender-based abortions and even the use of an ultrasound for sex-determination is illegal in India, but those in the medical profession and the families of the pregnant women look the other way on a daily basis. There's even a term for it: gendercide.

Here in the United States, we would think that only the poor, uneducated people would think that it was a good thing to only have male offspring. The outlawed practice/custom of dowry is their reason, they simply cannot afford to have them married off.

Strangely though, even wealthy families don't want girls. Oddly, for the same reasons, they don't want to pay dowry. What would possess a paternal grandmother to make her daughter-in-law go for the illegal ultrasound, and if refused, try to cause the pregnant woman bodily harm? If the daughter-in-law actually submits to the ultrasound, and a girl-child is found, then she faces pressure to abort, even if it's late in the pregnancy. God forbid she actually has the nerve to defy everyone and has her child, she'll spend the rest of the child's (and her) life trying to keep the pissed off paternal relatives from trying to assassinate them. What a life. Happens in India all the time though.

While they recognize that a shortage of women (in most areas the ratio is 300 women for 1000 men) is nto a good thing, they just want the women to be in someone else's family, NOT theirs.

In a country that worships a plethora of female deities, and has an almost equal percentage of female legislators, PLUS has had many female heads of state, it seems absolutely asinine that India would have such a low regard for the rest of the population of females. I think their government should adopt a law similar to China, and outlaw more than 1 girl/1 boy per married couple, and give financial incentives to try to keep it that way. Chances are, no one is going to pay much attention to a law like that since they can't seem to obey or try to divert from the laws that have already tried to solve the problem every chance they get.

While the plight of women in India is deplorable, perhaps the misogynistic sentiments will assist with curbing the exponentially unsustainable population growth problem there. Sorry, but that's the only glimmer of something good from this situation. A war between India and China might get rid of a few extra men, if they can keep the planet from nuclear war.