As many as 6.8 million girls could be missing from the population in India by 2030 due to sex-selection abortions, according to new research published in the PLOS ONE journal.
Discriminatory sex-selection abortions have been a problem for decades in India, where many families prefer sons to daughters. The problem is so terrible that the government even prohibited prenatal testing for the sex of the baby in 1994, but the deadly discrimination still occurs and few are speaking out against it.
PTI reports the new study by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and the Universite de Paris in France examined birth data in 21 regions of the country and found major imbalances in the ratio of boys to girls at birth.
According to the study, the highest imbalances are in the northwestern region of India and specifically in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The researchers predicted that approximately 6.8 million girls will be killed in sex-selection abortions in India through 2030, according to the report.
“We project that the highest deficits in female births will occur in Uttar Pradesh, with a cumulative number of missing female births of 2 million from 2017 to 2030,” the researchers said.
Here’s more from the report:
For the whole of India, summing up the 29 state-level projections, the cumulative number of missing female births during 2017 to 2030 is projected to be 6.8 [million], they wrote in the study. The average annual number of missing female births between 2017 and 2025 is projected to be 469,000 per year and is projected to increase to 519,000 per year for the time period 2026 to 2030, according to the researchers.
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Their report is just one of many shocking findings from India. In 2019, Newsweek reported no baby girls were born in a three-month period in all of the Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand state, northern India. Birth data from the district indicates that all of the 216 babies who were born were boys, according to the report. Authorities suspect the reason was sex-selection abortions.
In 2001, India had 93 girls for every 100 boys. In 2016, the ratio was 89 girls for every 100 boys, according to population data. Experts estimate tens of millions of girls are missing from the country.
In China, sex-selection abortions also are a problem, especially coupled with the communist leaders’ oppressive population control measures, which limit families to two or three children. Recent reports have documented how men are struggling to find wives because so many girls are missing due to sex-selection abortions.
Sex-selection abortions target baby girls across the world, but prominent feminist and human rights groups often ignore the deadly discrimination.
The United Nations Population Fund, for example, condemns sex-selection abortions in its documents but does nothing to actually stop the discrimination, the Church Militant noted earlier this year.
And in the United States, only a few states ban the discriminatory practice. Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups fight against bans on sex-selection abortions. As one Planned Parenthood leader to the AP last year, “EVERY reason to have an abortion is a valid reason,” including for sex-selection.
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Author: Micaiah Bilger
