This is exactly why there is always a higher percentage of women than men. We're supposed to have a 53/47% balance, and female infanticide and abortions upset the balance, which results in women becoming sexual slaves because they are outnumbered. Look for the same to happen in China, too.

so....abortion is bad?

Morgain, we're supposed to not force eachother into sexual slavery. Male:female ratios of society shouldn't have to figure into it. People know better.

to suggest anyone is saying "abortion is bad" is reductionist. what's bad is the total sexism inherent in Indian culture, which causes families to devalue their females, and therefore abort them post-ultrasound on the discovery that the gender of the fetus is female. I think this is an abuse of choice. I understand that in Canada they now refuse to release gender information at ultrasounds to prevent this kind of abuse of choice. Too bad India doesn't have this law. Having the right to choose doesn't abrogate our responsibility to make sound choices.

tx,
i think there's a deeper problem that treating the symptom (making gender information unavailalbe to expectant parents) doesn't really deal with...

like why on earth are parents electing not have daughters? what factors are causing that. i think canada's tactic may be useful in the short term but really just cuts down on parents' access to information as a way of dealing with a huge social issue that reaches much further than just encouraging people to abort.

and i don't think this abuse lies solely on the shoulders of the parents (though it surely does to a large degree)... it is a gargantuan misfortune that parents estimate the value of a daughter as less than that of a son...

and, finally, i gotta shout out and be like 'yo' that's totally on point... with grater freedoms comes greater responsibility... yeha yeah... great point!

peace and blessings

oooh... i said 'grater' freedoms... but that only applies to cheese... i meant 'greater'... please excuse me... i don't eat cheese, so i don't give a what about graters...

I recently spent 6 months traveling around India, and while I am by no means an expert in Indian social issues or anything like that, I think I can offer some insight here. There are much deeper issues at work here than just a preference for male babies, this has much to do with the entire religious/social/political/caste system of India. I believe that ultrasounds to detect the gender of fetuses in India is actually illegal there as well. I read an indepth article in an Indian news/political/current events magazine about this issue. The article said it was illegal to have an ultrasound to determine gender. The article said there were traveling illegal ultrasound providers. What's sad is the Sihkkim (who compramise a large part of the Punjabi population) are one of the wealthier, better educated groups in India and are still doing this. But then again, they have the money to do this.

On to the deeper aspects of this, it's a problem that's endemic in much of Indian society, because of the way that society is structured. Yes it is incredibly sexist, but westerners going there and telling people this or trying to change it will not work. Of course people will resent you if you tell them their way of life is wrong. In India for a variety of reasons male children are much more valued than female children. Females must (depending on caste and sub caste) be educated, yet she will be leaving the family. The family must provide a dowry for her and when she marries she will become part of the husband's family. So economically it's very bad for Indian families to have female children, because they cost a lot of money and the family basically gets nothing in return. This of course has deeper sociological implications about value, and much of it is related to the caste system.

If having a girl baby will cause undo hardship on the family or mother to be, how can this be defined as "an abuse of choice".

Your logic is flawed.

Either the fetus has no rights so it is wrong to withhold gender information because the woman can use any rational she wants to use or even no rational if she so chooses and the fact that more female fetus are being aborted shouldn't matter.....

OR

Abortion is wrong in many cases.

You can't have an abuse of choice without admiting that there are situations that a woman makes the "wrong" choice.

wow, tfreridge, for once i agree with half of what you have to say.

i think it's more than a little messed up for someone from a more priveleged case to pass judgement on such a difficult decision. or to consider it the "wrong" decision... if having a daughter means that the family's going to have a harder time getting enough to eat, well, there's something bigger at stake... and there's no "right" decision.

which is why i should really stop writing and just defer to msasher's post... and just add, again, that withholding information is a whole nother layer of circumventing choice at an essential level.

oh, yeah, and that it's not just women making the "wrong" choice in this case.

puckalish and msasher, you are both totally right. I was mainly replying to the "so is abortion bad" comment.... and yes, there must be hardships involved for families having female children for such an extreme result to occur. (wouldn't this be an example of the inherent sexism, ie, gender inequalities, in the culture that causes this to happen?)
there are a lot of much deeper issues here than simply a band-aid law (which I still think is a good idea in the meantime), indeed msasher. thanks for being willing to trough the deeper waters. agreed on all fronts, and applause. to repeat you, it's a cultural problem, in which the entire culture is perhaps being forced to make some less than good choices in how it deals with family issues. an abuse of choice doesn't mean "it's unfair to only abort female fetuses"; how about using abortion to shortcut a problem endemic to the society as a whole is not an effective way to deal with the overall problem. the result is clearly disastrous for everyone. question is, how to solve for this? obviously the west can't march in and demand they live differently - that would be ridiculous. change comes from within.