Worth Saving (Hannah's Heartbeat Newsletter)
It was supposed to be great news for India’s women when a prestigious medical institute touted sex-determination testing in 1974: Now mothers wouldn’t have to keep having babies until they produced that coveted boy child.
Only one flaw in that thinking: It means millions of female fetuses have been aborted since then while officials pursued population control and traditional society favored dowry-attracting sons over dowry-costing daughters. The truly good news is that India outlawed dowries in 1961 and that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year labeled infanticide a “national disgrace,” urging action to save baby girls. The ongoing bad news, though, is that dowries are still popular and more costly than ever and that a leading activist says government isn’t doing much to crack down on feticide.
The unequal and often deadly treatment doesn’t stop with babies, either. The BBC reported the story of Kulwant, a mother of three daughters whose family forced her to have three abortions before she finally delivered a son. She said her in-laws threatened that her husband would leave her if she didn’t have a son and even tried to set her on fire.
The BBC quoted Kulwant as recalling her first abortion this way: “The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed."
Of course, India is far from being the only country struggling with certain traditions that continue to be disastrous for women. China’s one-child policy is cited as the reason it has a sex ratio more sharply skewed against girl babies than that of any other nation, second place going to its giant neighbor to the south. At the top of the list explaining such skewed ratios are infanticide and feticide, along with abuse and neglect of girl children.
In many Arab societies, traditions of patriarchy, honor and tribal identity are bound up in legal systems run by authoritarian regimes. The effect is seen in hundreds of Arab proverbs belittling women as having “half a mind, half a creed, half an inheritance,” according to Time magazine.
Women of Hope began airing in India in 2005, addressing this issue and many others as it expanded to broadcast in eight Indian languages. The program’s vital contributions to the global struggle against gender inequality are made possible by supporters of Project Hannah and by prayer intercessors around the world.