by Paula Bolyard
{A 2013 article that highlights the real war on women in China and India where infanticide on female babies is the norm. There is no gender confusion there but it's nothing that advances the media agenda. - ED}
The United
Nations estimates there are as many as 200 million girls missing from the world
today — killed, aborted or abandoned, simply because they are females. India
and China alone “eliminate” more girls than are born in the United States every
year.
In India, the
desire for male children has led to
widespread sex-selection abortions targeting females. On average, one girl a
minute is aborted in India just because she is female. Infanticide — the murder of baby girls
who survive birth — is also widely practiced in some areas.
According to The Invisible Girl Project, “Infanticide is so widely practiced in
some areas of India, that the mortality rate for girls between the ages of 1-5
is 75% higher than the mortality rate for boys of the same age.” Girls and women
also die from neglect, lethal violence,
and dowry killings. There are 37 million more men than women in India, a
statistic that has contributed to widespread human trafficking; women and
girls are regularly sold in India’s brothels.
New York
Times contributor Mai Jian described the brutality of
the forced abortions and forced
sterilization, particularly in rural villages in China: “Village family-planning officers vigilantly
chart the menstrual cycle and pelvic-exam results of every woman of childbearing
age in their area. If a woman gets pregnant without permission and is unable
to pay the often exorbitant fine for violating the policy, she risks being
subjected to a forced abortion.”
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, said that China’s one-child policy “causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth.”
Human rights advocate Markus Redding from Columbia
University has called
gendercide “our
generation’s holocaust — a systematic extermination of millions just because
they are females.”
He said, “Most people can’t believe it. They can’t
believe the numbers. When you talk about a Nazi holocaust occurring right now,
people are in denial about it.” Redding said it’s a direct violation of human rights and
against international law and we must mobilize the international community to
end this abuse of women.
It’s A Girl, a
feature-length documentary that focuses on gendercide and forced abortion in
India and China, was recently presented to Amnesty International’s film
series against gender violence by Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. The
documentary is part of the group’s “Save a Girl”
campaign that includes providing monthly support for women at risk of aborting
or abandoning their baby girls and emergency help for women in danger as a
result of oppressive coercive family planning
policies.
The article first appeared here