Since when are the lives of females so expendable that as soon as future parents learn that the fetus growing inside the mother is female they arrange for abortion? According to a report in an Abu Dhabi newspaper: “Last month in Ahmedabad, India, passers-by spotted an apparently dead newborn baby being pulled out of a pile of rubbish by stray dogs at a street-side waste disposal site. From the spot police soon recovered the remains of eight aborted fetuses and seven newborn babies hidden inside the rubbish. An initial investigation found that they had been secretly dumped by a private hospital in the city, in a grisly case that highlights the persistence of feticide and infanticide.” India has had laws on the books since 1994 outlawing the identification of babies' genders so as to deter parents from aborting female fetuses. The fact is, however, that a lucrative underground business has evolved in which doctors illegally tell parents their child's gender and then terminate the pregnancy if it is a girl. The killing of female babies is a tradition based primarily on the economics of the workplace and the dowry system and usually takes place in areas of significant poverty. The practice is so ingrained in parts of Indian society that authorities often just look the other way. Rarely, if ever, are those who engage in such practices punished. Obviously, education is the main weapon against such barbaric practices, but some Indian observers have said that at this point education would have minimal influence. The practice is so much a part of some peoples' world view that even education is too little late. Only the strictest enforcement of the law can serve as a remedy right now. The cultural change will come later. India should enforce the laws on its books and put a stop to the grisly and murderous practice of terminating pregnancies of female babies or killing them soon after they are born. Not only does it wreak havoc with India's population, throwing into tremendous imbalance the number of men and women, it is a practice that should have been stopped long before the beginning of the 21st century. __
