Kønsdiskrimination i Indien: abort og infanticid

Under the headline “India, the land where they kill little girls” the French woman’s magazine “Marie-Claire” brings a harrowing depiction of how a country systematically seeks to limit the number of women. Though the past years there have been established a number of centers where the Indian women can have amniocenteses. But no one waits the mandatory three weeks to hear if the fetus is normal. It’s enough for the Indian women to get to know if it is a boy or a girl. If it's a girl they make abortion - often of a quack, because they cannot afford the hospital. Already does it cost a month's salary to get an amniocentesis. The women who are looking for centers, are the ones who already have one or two girls. The family can't afford more, because it is so expensive to marry them away. The dowry is huge given the families ' income. The organization “Womens center” in Bombay have examined the number of abortions that have taken place after amniocenteses in the years 1978-82. The number was 78,000. Besides, so far as is known, none of the amniocenteses centers are equipped in such a way that they can't tell what they are supposed to tell, whether the fetus is normal. Officially, it is prohibited to carry out an abortion because of the foster's sex. It is also prohibited to kill little girls. Nevertheless, 85 percent of the girls who are born at the hospital in the town Usilampatti Taluk dead shortly after birth. The cause of death is in most cases told to be febrile diseases. Many little girls under the age of five dies of malnutrition also. It is estimated that about 70 percent of all little girls are malnourished, while only 48 percent of the boys are malnourished. Part of the reason can be found in the fact that the women are breastfeeding their baby boys much longer than their girls. In the Indian schools there are still, according to the "Marie-Claire", twice as many boys as girls, and India is the only country in the world where the number of women is declining in proportion to the number of men.