Sex selection via infanticide
Found this over at Adam The Catholic's blog.
Indian filmgoers have a weakness for feel-good song-and-dance spectaculars. So it's not surprising that Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women won a handful of international prizes, but flopped at home. It is a tale of unrelieved horror. An innocent young girl is sold to a rural family of five sons and married to all five, plus the father. In the end, the whole woman-less village gets into the act and murderous fights break out for her favours. The film ends with the lass giving birth to a daughter.
Is this a nightmarish fantasy dreamed up by man-hating feminists?
To Western audiences, perhaps, but in India, the notion of “a nation without women” is no fantasy. It could be the future. So many unborn and newly-born girls are being killed as a result of a deep-seated preference for male heirs that millions of young men will find it hard to marry.
At the moment, according to figures from the 2001 census, the national ratio of girls aged 0-to-6 to boys is 927 to 1,000. The normal figure should be 950 to 1,000. However, this conceals enormous regional and social differences. According to the British NGO ActionAid, the situation is worst in the northern state of Punjab. "The most extreme case that we found in our research was among wealthy Punjabi families where in some communities there's only 300 girls to every 1,000 boys,” says Laura Turquet, ActionAid's women's rights policy official.
"The real horror of the situation is that, for women, avoiding having daughters is a rational choice. But for wider society it's creating an appalling and desperate state of affairs," said Ms Turquet. Despite India's growing prosperity – or perhaps because of it -- there is growing pressure on women to produce sons, because girls are seen as an expense, rather than an asset. To marry them off, parents have to pay a huge dowry. “Spend 500 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later,” is a slogan which every parent has heard.
India isn't alone in this. Last year I found an article detailing how the same thing is happening in China. You can bet any countries run by the Islamists are following along, the followers of the pedophile prophet have their own version of "cafeteria-style" religious adherents.
Before too many of us smugly point fingers, I'd bet my next retirement check it's also going on here. What the hell, we're already murdering any less-than-perfect babies (check out the drop in those born with Down's Syndrome in the last forty years) so what's the big deal about infanticide done in the name of sex selection?
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That hath such people in't!"
3 comments:
Ummmm--islamacists abhor abortion.
Anonymous, you're absolutely correct that their "religion" doesn't condone it. My point (badly made perhaps) is that in the highly misogynistic Islamic countries a little bending of the rules to prevent the birth of female babies wouldn't be unexpected.
I heard once that in the US it tends to be more aimed at getting one boy and one girl.
Still creepy and depressing.
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