Indian premier calls for end to killing unborn girls

[Grimmlok]

Indian premier calls for end to killing of unborn girls
Aug 15 1:07 PM US/Eastern
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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on parents in India to stop seeing girls as an economic liability and to end the practice of killing unborn female foetuses.

Singh's appeal on India's 59th Independence Day came four days after the grisly discovery of 25 female foetuses from a private clinic in northern Punjab state, which has the country's lowest sex ratio due to rampant female foeticide.

"We must end the crime of female foeticide. We must eliminate gender disparity," Singh said in an address to the nation.

"We have a dream of an India in which every woman can feel safe, secure and empowered. Where our mothers, sisters and daughters are assured a life of dignity and personal security," he added.

A study by British medical journal The Lancet said this year that India may have lost 10 million unborn girls in the past 20 years, but Indian experts say the figure is not more than five million.

Under Indian law, tests to find out the gender of an unborn baby are illegal if not done for medical reasons, but the practice continues in what activists say is a flourishing multi-million dollar business.

Premier Singh urged parents not to neglect their girl children.

"It should be ensured that every young woman is educated and skilled and capable of guiding a new generation," he said.

Punjab state has 798 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six while the national average is 927 -- still well below the worldwide average of 1,050 female babies.

Girls in India are often considered a liability as parents have to put away large sums of money for dowries at the time of their marriage.

Centuries of tradition also demand that couples produce at least one male child to carry on the family name.

Many grooms demand dowry well beyond the means of families of their spouse -- demands which often result in the killing of newly-married women.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, India in 2004 posted 19 dowry-related deaths every day but women's organisations say the actual figure is 10 times higher.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/0....0gj48car.html

[AliceInWonderland]

Its called Education India; look into it!

education is the key to freedom from those ties that bind; mainly men and their backwards views on a "woman's role"! I've read that women are making up more and more of the workforce there; mostly those call centers for companies like Dell.

[LynnieD]

God these people are such dumbshits. HELLO?? YOU NEED FEMALES--like it or not!!!! Pieces of shit.

[Sojiita]

Hopefully the terrible and stupid ideas and traditions that are increasingly leading to a shortage of women will actually empower women in a way by making them more and more valuable simply because of their scarcity. Then they will end up selecting FOR females and aborting the males! sick all around.

*Alice why do you hate men so much! We are not ALL bad ya know! *

[moomies]

^^ maybe Alice is a FemiNazi...

[MrsDark]

Originally Posted by Sojiita

Hopefully the terrible and stupid ideas and traditions that are increasingly leading to a shortage of women will actually empower women in a way by making them more and more valuable simply because of their scarcity. Then they will end up selecting FOR females and aborting the males! sick all around.

*Alice why do you hate men so much! We are not ALL bad ya know! *

Unfortunately, the way this manifests itself in countries like this is often with women being bought and sold (or traded) like commodities. I've heard about men renting out their wives to other men, girls getting kidnapped and forced into marriages, etc.

[pacific breeze]

Well, India is one of the more advanced countries, believe it or not. There are a lot of Indians in the Vancouver area, to the point where no one is allowed to learn the sex of their baby if they live in certain neighbourhoods.

[moomies]

Many East Indians are very well educated, too. But I think there's a great disparity in wealth and priviledges (maybe access to education etc) because of their caste system...