I wrote here about a series in the Washington Times about India and abortion. (H/T GetReligion)
GetReligion has a new article about the series after the third installment was released. Terry Mattingly of GetReligion was afraid the series would be politicized--turned into something about left and right--as opposed to being about "a connection in India, and in China, between modern technology and the ultimate form of sexism — an attempt to favor males by preventing females from even being born."
The problem posed isn't so difficult for people like me who are very pro-life. I was more curious about the differing use of technology--the ultrasound--by women in India, who want to abort female babies, and pro-lifers in this country, who use the ultrasound pictures as a way to discourage women from having abortions.
I asked how pro-choice women square their support of abortion with what women in India use that "choice" for. While I've had a couple of people try to answer that question, I'm still not satisfied with the answers (not because I don't think the commenters aren't being honest or trying to present a reasonable answer, but because I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around the concept yet. But I'm trying).
A documentary was made about doctors who either performed abortions after 20 weeks or who gave referrals to women more than 20 weeks pregnant. Both actions are illegal under Indian law, but that doesn't stop anyone. The documentary caused an enormous furor for daring to speak the truth.
The descriptions of women killing their babies (both before and after birth) is shocking.
In Rajasthan's violent desert culture, baby girls were drowned in boiling milk or abandoned in a sand dune. Whole villages went decades without female children.
The question I kept asking myself was What happens in these cultures when there are no women to have children? The answer: sex trafficking.
Currently, women-starved parts of western India are importing women. The best trafficking season, reports Supriya Awasthi, South Asia director for Free the Slaves, a New Delhi-based advocacy group, is in the summer during the monsoons, when people are most hungry and desperate.
Girls from Nepal and Bangladesh constitute 70 percent of all trafficked girls. Top Nepalese hubs are the capital Katmandu; Sindhupalchowk, a district north of Katmandu; and Makwanpur, which is east of the capital.
They end up at a slave market known as Phoolbagh in the Purnia district of Bihar, India's poorest state. Girls are then traded to circuses or loaded on trucks or trains bound for states like Punjab and Haryana, which have the country's worst male-female sex ratios.
Miss Awasthi particularly remembers one 12-year-old she ran into in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. She had been raped by five men and was three months pregnant. She had a baby boy, who died.
People go to huge lengths to unload their girl children, she said. "The government bans child marriage but nothing substantial has been done so far.
"The police can be moved to take action only if there is pressure from the local people who complain to local bureaucrats. Or a court can direct police to act. Or they will act out of pressure from the media."
The shortage of women here has opened the market for "paros," or trafficked women, purchased for 12,000 to 15,000 rupees, or $260 to $330. Those under 14 go for less: 5,000 to 10,000 rupees, or $110 to $220.
Aphrael noted that as the number of women went down, their value would increase and, perhaps, the status of women in these countries would improve. I didn't argue the point, but, as this article points out, almost the opposite is true. As the number of women in these places is reduced, their monetary value goes up but their value as people is reduced even further.
I find this series shocking, horrifying, and depressing. There are organizations fighting the trafficking of people, but I want this to be a major concern both for our government in its foreign policy and for non-government organizations.
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