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10m girls 'missing' in India's selective abortions
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-01-09 14:43
Around 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the
past two decades because of ultrasound sex screening and a traditional
preference for boys, according to a study published online in The Lancet.
Indian school children during a rally. Around
10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the past
two decades because of ultrasound sex screening and a traditional
preference for boys, according to a study.
[AFP] | Researchers based in Canada and India
looked through data from a national survey, conducted among 1.1 million
households in 1998, and at information about 133,738 births that took place in
1997.
They found that in cases where the preceding child was a girl, the gender
ratio for a second birth was just 759 girls to 1,000 boys.
And when the two previous children were girls, this ratio fell even further,
to 719 girls to 1,000 boys.
On the other hand, when the preceding child or children were male, the gender
ratio among successive births was about the same.
Based on the natural sex ratio in other countries, around 13.6-13.8 million
girls should have been born in India in 1997 -- but the actual number was 13.1
million.
"We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective
abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly," said one of the
authors, Prabhat Jha of St. Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto,
Canada, on Monday.
"If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since
access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing
female births would not be unreasonable."
The "girl deficit" is far more prominent in educated women, the investigators
found.
The number of boys born as second children was twice as high among this group
than among illiterate mothers.
However, the deficit did not vary by religion.
The study published by the London-based medical journal comes on the heels of
a report last October by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which
warned that infanticide or abortion was driving India towards a gender imbalance
with alarming social consequences.
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