This is sick. Because so many families were aborting girl babies, I guess India made sex determination tests during pregnancy illegal to try to prevent the common practice of women choosing to abort female babies.
But an unforeseen consequence has sprung up. And it’s an ugly one. Now it seems that families are having little girls but they’re so dissapointed that they’re paying surgeons to perform sex change operations to transmogrify little girls into little “boys.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008623/Girls-young-ONE-forced-sex-change-operations-India.html#ixzz1Qa3iRFspThe Daily Mail reports:
Girls as young as one are being forced into sex change operations in India by parents desperate for a son.
Surgeons in the city of Indore are reported to be ‘converting’ hundreds of girls a year, who are subsequently pumped full of hormone drugs.
A report in the respected Hindustan Times newspaper said the ‘shocking, unprecedented trend, catering to the fetish for a son, is unfolding at conservative Indore’s well-known clinics and hospitals on children who are one to five years old.
There is no answer to this other than love and respect for every individual human. Without love, other people can be manipulated and changed, killed, or discarded at our convenience.
June 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm
0.0
Just when you think it can't get worse….
June 28, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Those poor babies:( How devastating. Now instead of a parent answering their baby on Judgement Day "we didn't want you because you were a girl, so we aborted you." Those girls will live with this parental decision for the rest of their lives.
And where's the UN on this one??? Anyone Anyone? Hello? Hello? So much for women's rights.
June 28, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Soul and DNA are male or female, poor things!
June 28, 2011 at 4:50 pm
That is horrific.
Though I must admit that when I saw the headline I first thought some group was championing "transgendered" children here in America.
June 28, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Horrific is not even a strong enough word. This is beyond words.
June 28, 2011 at 7:15 pm
You know what, some cultures are better than others. They'd be (slightly) better off under English rule again.
June 28, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Can you say Lifetime of Therapy, boys and girls? Or boys and "boys"?
June 28, 2011 at 8:38 pm
We should stop exporting jobs to India, and stop importing goods from them, until they stop this and other human rights abuses.
June 28, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Very sad. I know some really wonderful Indian women and girls and this just disgusts me. I was just reflecting to myself yesterday while running and seeing an Indian mother with her little son on a training wheel bike how loving and attentive most Indian mothers are. Can't imagine parents wanting a boy child so much that they would harm their girl baby in this way, especially as I see Indian parents everyday being so loving toward their children. (There are many, many Indian immigrants permanent and temporary where I live in Illinois.)
June 28, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Even though gender-selective abortions are illegal, they still happen — as does female infanticide. Parents (or sometimes the grandparents) do not want a girl, and simply leave the full-term infant to die.
Colleen, we have a lot of Indian families at our school too, and the women I know are terrific mothers. I think it's hard to understand that part of a culture unless you've been raised in it . . .
We adopted our 4-year-old daughter from India, precisely because we heard stories like these, and are waiting for another daughter. Thank God their mothers placed them for adoption instead of succumbing to cultural pressure.
Nancy
June 29, 2011 at 2:09 am
Consider the source – The Daily Mail is a tabloid. Not everything you read on the internet is true. (Thank God!)
June 29, 2011 at 2:31 am
Paging Hillary… paging Louise… paging Cecile… where are all those women who care about women–??
June 29, 2011 at 3:20 am
A son is the family's social security in old age, in India, in China. A daughter can love and provide for her family as well as a son if society allows her.
@Marc Aupiais
Soul and DNA are male or female, poor things!
Thank you
Mary De Voe
July 4, 2011 at 4:34 am
I'm an Indian mother. I'm glad someone pointed out the source – a sensationalist tabloid. There is a condition wherein babies are born with the genitals of both sexes. Parents decide which sex they want the child to be and a medical procdure is done.
Naturally in India, being a patriarchal culture, parents would select boy. However the only case that I personally know like this, the parents selected girl, and they were both Indian. The baby grew up to be a masculine woman with facial hair and deep voice. Some people are born with both male and female hormones.
The sex selection abortion issue is mainly in 2 states, Haryana and Punjab. These are 2 very macho, very male-oriented regions of North India. There the sex ratio has been skewed to favor males. However it really doesn't favor them because when they grow up there will be a lack of women to marry.
This is what happens when a patriarchal and patrilineal culture favors male over female for practical reasons.
In most of India, but in Haryana and Punjab in particular, the son stays at home his entire life and brings his bride to live in the same house as his parents. This ensures patrilineal property being handed down from father to son, father to son, throughout the ages.
When you have a daughter she will grow up and move out of your house into her in-law's house and you will have to give a dowry to them.
However, if you have a son, the dowry comes to you from his bride's family and your son and his wife will take care of you in old age.
This is the retirement plan, medicare and old age home system throughout rural India.
MOST Indians are NOT aborting female fetuses. However it is a real issue in Haryana and Punjab.