FRED
DE SAM LAZARO: This group home operated by a Hindu organization
in New Delhi offers a safe haven from the city streets,
where these children were abandoned. The sex ratio here
-- 37 girls, two boys -- says a great deal about how girls
are viewed in India.DR. NINA PURI (International Planned Parenthood): Almost from creation to cremation, women are discriminated against.
DE SAM LAZARO: The root of the problem is ancient and economic. Male children are favored since they carry the family name and frequently get the family inheritance. Girls are viewed as liabilities, who will cost their parents a dowry when they marry and move into their husband's homes in the Indian tradition.
DR.
PURI: People feel that bringing up a daughter is like
watering a plant in someone else's house, because here they're
going to educate her, nurture her, spend money on her; ultimately
she's going to [be] married and going to somebody else,
so what's the worth of that?DE SAM LAZARO: Years of campaigns and laws have failed to eradicate India's dowry tradition, which cuts across all religions. The result is a history of female infanticide, and in recent years, abortion. Dr. Sharada Jain, a Delhi gynecologist, says about five million pregnancies were terminated last year, after parents found out they were expecting a female child.
DR. SHARADA JAIN (Gynecologist): Five million is a big number. And we activists feel it is only the tip of the iceberg. You interview anybody in my clinic. If she has had a girl child before, you can know it for sure that she has had a sex determination [test] somewhere else, and now it is a male child. That's why she is carrying through with the pregnancy. As simple as that.
DE SAM LAZARO (to Dr. Jain): Do you see patients who have two girls in a row?
DR. JAIN: Yes, but the percentage is very small. I would say 10 percent.
DE SAM LAZARO: Ironically, ultrasonography, one of the most beneficial diagnostic tools used to monitor fetal health, is widely misused in sex determination, leading to abortion. Ultrasound clinics are available is many places that barely have electricity.
The
town of Palwal, about an hour and a half north of Delhi,
has about 40,000 residents -- small by India's standards.
Yet it has no fewer than 24 ultrasound machines. Not coincidentally,
the population of Haryana, the province, has one of the
most lopsided gender ratios: 830 females for every 1,000
males.Normally, scientists say the sex ratio is about even, with slightly more females than males. This means that in India, nearly one in five female fetuses is aborted in parts of India -- nearly one in 10 nationally.
This woman, a mother of three girls and pregnant again, is desperate for a son.
DR. SUDHIR SUBHANI (Radiologist): She was complaining about abdominal pain, so that is why we have done the scan.
Radiologist Sudhir Subhani said the cause of this patient's pain became quickly evident: a twin pregnancy.
DE SAM LAZARO (to Dr. Subhani): Is it good news for her or bad?
DR.
SUBHANI: It's good news and bad news. She's expecting
one boy and one girl.DE SAM LAZARO: You couldn't tell her that?
DR. SUBHANI: No. She wanted to know, but I just told her that she had twins.
DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Subhani told us, but at least by law, could not reveal the sex to the mother. In fact, in 1994 the Indian government outlawed sonograms for sex determination. Problem is, in a country where abortion is legal and widespread, the law has been difficult to implement. One thing it has done is raised the price of sex determination [tests].
DR.
KAKODKAR: No, that's what I said, there is no legal
sanction because there is nothing on paper.
DR.
JAIN: The doctors feel the government works so slow
that nobody can touch them and that's why the fear complex
is not there. If one or two are caught and the media publicizes
it, something can be done, [but] I don't think there is
political will.
