Up To 10M Female Fetuses Aborted In India In Last Two Decades, Study Says

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 11 Jan 2006 - 11:00 PDT

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Up to 10 million female fetuses might have been aborted in India over the past 20 years and about 500,000 female fetuses continue to be aborted annually, according to a study published in the Jan. 9 online edition of the journal Lancet, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports. Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, and a team of Indian researchers examined 133,738 births among more than six million people included in a seven-year ongoing national study of female fertility and mortality (Picard, Globe and Mail, 1/9). The study finds that the sex of the preceding child was a determining factor in deciding to abort a female fetus (AlJazeera.net, 1/9). If the first-born infant was a male, the rates of male to female fetuses for second births were approximately equivalent, the study says. In cases where the first-born infant was a female, the ratio of female to male fetuses was 759 to 1,000. When two preceding births were female, the ratio of females to males in the third-born infant was 719 to 1,000 (BBC News, 1/9). The researchers also noted that the deficit in the number of female infants born as a second or third child was two times as high among educated women as among uneducated ones (AP/CBS.com, 1/9). The researchers did not find any differences among religious groups (Globe and Mail, 1/9). According to government statistics, the number of girls per 1,000 boys decreased from 945 to 927 in the country between 1991 and 2001 (AP/CBS.com, 1/9).

Reaction
"We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for [500,000] missing girls yearly," Jha said (Globe and Mail, 1/9). He added, "If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable." Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, India, said in a commentary on the report, "To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter's arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter." The Indian government in 1994 banned fetal sex determination and abortion based on the sex of the fetus, but Sheth said there are published data that the practices allegedly still exist. Co-author Rajesh Kumar of the School of Public Health in Chandigarh, India, said, "Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths" (Reuters/Independent Online, 1/9).

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