King of spade beats the Queen
Female foeticide: Selective elimination of female foetuses

March 2, 2006
iranian.com

The unholy alliance between tradition (son-complex) and technology (ultrasound) is playing havoc within Eastern hemisphere. From Arab world, Iran, Pakistan, India and China 'Sons are rising, daughters setting.‚ In two major 'super powers of population demographic growth' amongst the newborn boys out born girls by margin beyond permitted by Mother Nature over centuries of known data. 105 boys should be born for every 100 girls (Mother Nature prefers boys by 5%) but the birth mix is totally lopsided in favor of boys. It is around 119 to 100 in India and China and even in Iran the tendency of selectivity of male gender is obvious from the unofficial census results.

A male dominated society encourages violence and is a frontal attack on Mother Nature ways to breed generations and have maintained a fine balance of finesse, loveliness and brute force on our unique planet. Sex selection is a covert form of violence while female foeticide is an overt form against women, with the use of tools like amniocentesis, chorion villai biopsy, sonography, ultrasound and imaging techniques and assisted reproductive technologies (in which infertile couples are helped to produce sons).

The social consequences of this selectivity affordable due to scientific advancement will have horrendous impact on future of our societies. Unlike the global weather and emissions impact that are still undetermined in context of time span, the alteration of the gender demographic patterns so rapidly will be obvious in next few decades. It will tilt the present critical balance heavily in favor of a male subjugated society, females has a very calming effect on the society, a male dominated society will be wilder and more prone to belligerence.

In most of these eastern ideologically infested societies education takes a back seat, and rural element of the male domination is very obvious, one needs to worry about the impact of these rural males with little opportunity and jobs left with heightened libidos and no girls. In areas where extremism has bred and ideological messages have been taken to heart by the faithful the new tilt may lead to new technicals. The Somailain kids who ravaged the country with their guns or havoc that clergy played with the Iranian youth in the war against Iraq, Iranian soldiers wore keys on their necks to open up the Garden of Eden.

During the Iran - Iraq war many Iranian 'soldiers', teenagers mostly, were given big, colorful plastic keys to wear around their necks - symbolic keys to the wonderful paradise, that lay just over there, just a little ways past the Iraqi minefields! Sadly these young boys never made it to the minefields, they were used as canon fodders and butchered much before triggering the minefields. Ironically enough this butchery happened as we see a huge growth of population of young man post revolution. The boys as young as 15 were sent to the front In societies that are long on ideology short on the importance of human life, the huge increase of young man by selectivity is asking for trouble. No one seems to care about this rising menace and butchering of female foetuses.

Sex selection is a violation of law and unethical. But our patriarchal society continues to turn a blind eye towards it or offer perverted excuses to justify its existence. Even the medical community has not protested against the malpractices of its guilty peers. In FP article 'The Geopolitics of Sexual Frustration' Martin Walker talks about Millions of young men in Asia won‚t be able to find wives. Will they fall in love with war instead?

The lost boys of Prof. Albert Macovski are upon us. Twenty years ago, the ultrasound scanning machine came into widespread use in Asia. The invention of Macovski, a Stanford University researcher, the device quickly gave pregnant women a cheap and readily available means to determine the sex of their unborn children. ''The results, by the million, are now coming to maturity in Bangladesh, China, India, and Taiwan. By choosing to give birth to males -- and to abort...''

South Asia have inherited the cultural legacy of strong son-preference among all communities, religious groups, and citizens of varied socio-economic backgrounds. This preference is embedded in patri-locality, patri-lineage, and patriarchy, and its result is discrimination in property rights and low-paid or unpaid jobs for women. The Census of India for 2001 revealed that with the sex ratio of 933 women for 1,000 men, India had a shortfall of 3.5 crore women when it entered the new millennium.

According to the Chandigarh-based Institute for Development and Communication, during 2002-2003 every ninth household in the state acknowledged sex selective abortion with the help of ante-natal sex determination tests. Commercial minded techno-docs and laboratory-owners have been using new reproductive technologies for femicide for over two and a half decades. Among the educated families, adoption of the small family norm means a minimum of one or two sons in the family.

The propertied class do not desire daughters because the son-in-law may demand a share in property. The property-less classes dispose off daughters to avoid dowry harassment (although they do not mind accepting dowry for their sons). The birth of a son is perceived as an opportunity for upward mobility while the birth of a daughter is believed to result in downward economic mobility. Though the stronghold of this ideology was north India, it is increasingly gaining ground all over India.

To stop the abuse of advanced scientific techniques for selective elimination of female foetuses through sex-determination, the government of India passed the PNDT Act in 1994. But the techno-docs based in the metropolis and urban centres, and parents desirous of begetting only sons have subverted the act. Avers Prof Ashish Bose (2001)

Many doctors have justified female foeticide as a tool to attain net reproduction rate (NRR) of one i.e. to attain population stabilisation or, that a mother should be replaced by only one daughter. There is an evident gender bias here too. To attain population stabilisation, a fertility rate of 2.1 is envisaged. There is evidence to indicate a sex ratio in favour of males and a prolonged duration of gender differentials in survivorship in the younger ages results in the masculining of the population sex ratio.

Communist China announced plans to criminalize sex-selective abortion, yet American and international feminist groups -- quick to denounce restrictions on the "right to choose" in any country -- did not complain.China's infringement on choice is a classic example of how novel social experiments always create crises that the government must intervene to solve. Socialism begets more socialism, a system of social organization that does not work -- and neither will the ban on sex-selective abortion. China is missing girls, 40 to 60 million of them, which will leave an equal number of young Chinese men without wives.

Chinese couples, allowed to have only one or two children, abort girls in the womb in order to try for boys later. Boys are preferred for traditional cultural reasons, because they support their parents in their old age (girls become part of their husbands' families when they marry), because they extend the family line, and because in rural areas, they can perform more labor. Between 117 and 119 boys are now born in China for every 100 girls when naturally speaking, 105 boys should be born for every 100 girls (Mother Nature prefers boys by 5%). The Chinese government has announced plans to eliminate the new disparity between male and female births by 2010, just five years away.

The criminal sex-selective abortion ban seems unlikely to work. India criminalized it to no effect: Her sex imbalance at birth has not improved. Almost no one gets into legal trouble for sex-selective abortion. How could they? Ultrasounds are taken to monitor the health of unborn children, so doctors always know their sex. Parents find out from them, even though it's illegal for the doctors to reveal it. Then they exercise their "right to choose." Is a preference for one sex over the other any worse a reason to have an abortion than convenience, or temporary physical or psychological discomfort? After all, 98% of abortions in America are elective by even pro-choice medical standards.