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About ten
million female births in India may have been
lost to abortion and sex selection over the
past 20 years because of a traditional preference
for boys.
These are the shock findings of a report, published
in the British Medical Journal, Lancet.
The study lays the blame squarely on the use
of ultrasound screening which can tell families
whether their child will be a boy or a girl.
The research, based on a national survey of
more than one million households, found an unusual
gender imbalance in the country.
The gender imbalance in India has been known
about for some time. It has caused a marriage
crisis in rural areas where thousands of young
men are failing to find brides.
The latest research was carried out by Prabhat
Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University
of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the
Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in
Chandigarh, India.
In their study published in the Lancet journal
(Jan 2006), they said prenatal selection and
selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000
girls a year.
Their research was based on a national survey
of 1.1m households in 1998.
The researchers claimed the "girl deficit"
was more common among educated women but did
not vary according to religion.
They found that there was an increasing tendency
to select boys when previous children had been
girls.
Prabhat Jha said conservative estimates in the
research suggested half a million girls were
being lost each year.
"If this practice has been common for most
of the past two decades since access to ultrasound
became widespread, then a figure of 10m missing
female births would not be unreasonable."
In most countries, women slightly outnumber
men. But separate research for the year 2001
showed that for every 1,000 male babies born
in India, there were only 933 girls.
Traditionally female children have been regarded
as inferior and a liability in India. This is
said to be a throw back to the time when India
was primarily an agrarian society where boys
were considered more useful for farm work.
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