Indian Women Stand Up to Husbands Who Demand Sex-Selective Abortions
By Carl Gierstorfer,
The Atlantic
| 03. 28. 2013
Selvi holds her tiny baby girl somewhat clumsily in her arms. She carefully strokes the thin legs of the helpless creature and pulls a soft white blanket over her body. There is a sense of disbelief in Selvi's face. If her husband had his way, the little girl would have never been born. He simply did not want a girl.
He and his mother tried to push Selvi into having an ultrasound scan to reveal the sex of the child. Even though sex-selective screening is against the law in India, every year thousands of fetuses are aborted for being female. Indian society wants sons, heirs to the family name and its fortunes, somebody to look after the parents when they are old. Girls are a financial burden, their future marriages clouded by dowry payments that ruin families for decades.
Having a girl, an Indian proverb says, is like watering your neighbor's garden.
But now, the first cracks are appearing in the sexist system. Selvi (who asked that her real name not be used) was born and raised in Dharavi, a...
Related Articles
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli, The New York Times | 09.24.2025
For some Greenlanders, sorry isn’t enough.
The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, made a special visit Wednesday to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to apologize in person for a traumatic chapter in Greenlandic history, when Danish doctors forced birth control on...
GeneWatch UK has prepared a briefing on the genetic modification of nature for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress in October 2025
The upcoming Congress claims to be “where the world comes together to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.” A major concern for those on the outside is that the Congress may advance plans to develop and encourage the use of synthetic biology in nature conservation. This could at first glance sound like...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...
By Charmayne Allison, ABC News | 09.21.2025
It has been seven years since Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui made an announcement that shocked the world's scientists.
He had made the world's first gene-edited babies.
Through rewriting DNA in twin girls' embryos, the man who would later be dubbed...