India apparently doesn’t want anymore girls.
There has been a trend among families who already have a girl to abort a pregnancy where prenatal tests show that the baby will be another girl.
This has been a problem in the past, and in 1996 there was a ban on testing for the gender of a fetus, although it’s clear now that it was largely ineffective.
The alleged reason for the increase in abortions is the huge cost of marrying off a girl and paying for her dowry.
Authors of the study suggested the following:
“Reliable monitoring and reporting of sex ratios by birth order in each of India’s districts could be a reasonable part of any efforts to curb the remarkable growth of selective abortions of girls.”
The real problem seems to be unequal treatment of men and women in marriages!
It’s a huge cultural issue and there’s no easy solution, but if that truly is the cause then something needs to change!
[Image via AP Images.]
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