Hi HRS
“that it is better to kill girls in the womb rather than have them born into what you regard as a patriarchal society”
No, I do not think of these societies as just patriarchal. I think of them as female-hostile societies.

Would you want to be a girl these societies? If you answer yes, I hope you would love to:
* Be at risk of being strangled or buried alive soon after birth.
* Be fed only when there are leftovers from the males’ plates.
* Have anaemia, which affect 90% of girls
* Be far less likely to be educated than your brothers.
* Be in high danger of rapes, assaults, and dowry-related murders.
* Be at a higher risk than anywhere else to die from childbirth.
* Work longer hours and do more arduous work than men and hugely underpaid.
* Remain unrecognised no matter how hard you work.
* Be spit on, cursed at, or even bashed when you deliver a girl.
* Be denied to own anything and have no inheritance rights.
* Be brought to health facilities in more advanced states off illness than your brothers, and be taken to less qualified doctors.
* Be 61% more likely to die between the ages of 1-5 than your brothers.

The above statements I gained from websites including Unicef. You can do your own research if you doubt what I say.

Stickman,

We do seem to agree. But. It could simply be an issue of interpretation, but I still find that the article, from the title on, diverts the focus on abortion.

My personal view on sex selective abortion is still unresolved. I've been thinking about that, because I instinctively dislike the idea.

I don't know yet if my motives for disliking it are wholly subjective. I support the availability of abortion in cases of failed contraception and the subsequent inability, or unwillingness to proceed with a pregnancy. I'm working through if and why the reasons are intrinsically different.

The closest I've come is that in the case of TOP for sex selection the pregnancy in itself is not the issue, but was planned/expected.

Celivia,
I would question anything from the United Nations. It is well known that the United Nations has become a very feminist and gender prejudiced organisation, that is gradually losing credibility, as it becomes more feminist and gender prejudiced.

India is one of the great success stories of last century. With an enormous population, it has been able to increase the life expectancy of its people from about 20 years in the early 1900’s, to above world average in 2008.

The life expectancy in India seems to be increasing each year, and this is not because of feminists, but mainly because of better sewage treatment systems that decrease diarrhea, which was a major cause of infant mortality. I don’t know of too many aware, loving and gender prejudiced feminists out digging sewage trenches.

The belief that women are being badly treated in India does not fit into statistics, when females in India now have a life expectancy of 71.9 years, compared to males at 66.87 years.

I also think the occurrence of many more abortions of baby girls than baby boys in India could be exaggerated or feminist type misinformation.

Consider the following statistics, and pick which country is India, and which country is Australia.

at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.8 male(s)/female
total population: 0.99 male(s)/female (2008 est.)

at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.1 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.9 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2008 est.)

Yvonne said:

"The closest I've come is that in the case of TOP for sex selection the pregnancy in itself is not the issue, but was planned/expected."

Exactly.

Celivia:

The term "therapeutic" just distinguishes them from spontaneous, or naturally occurring abortions (miscarriages), which are of course extremely common and not controversial.

The point about downsides is that they exist when you HAVE access to TOP - AND when you don't. It is not a simple argument, which I acknowledge. All I am asking you to acknowledge is that there are downsides to therapeutic TOP, including those that I listed. I read your quote correctly, and here it is again:

"I am, perhaps, one of the people who are ‘foaming at the mouth’ when someone agrees with the author that free access to therapeutic terminations has a downside."

So, yes I state again that I believe that there are downsides to free access to TOP, such as increased potential for sex-selective TOP. By all means tell me that you think there are downsides to NOT having access to TOP, but we aren't arguing that point, I have already stated that I agree with you about that.

Another point which has not been raised yet, is that sex-selective TOP is possible here and now in Australia (kit available online) and is doubtless occurring right now. Since you don't believe it is necessarily unethical in India, do you think that it is unethical here in Australia in 2008?

Stickman,
Thanks; I defined “therapeutic” differently.
I agree that there are downsides of having free access to “therapeutic” TOP- I’d acknowledged that already, I just defined the word “therapeutic” differently.
Childbirth, of course, has downsides, too.

Sex-selective TOP in Australia… I have problems with accepting that unless it’s done purely for medical reasons. I struggle with this issue.
Women in Australia are under no pressure to produce a particular gender, at least not from our society.
I’m not sure how pressured our immigrant women from these countries still are to have a sex-selective TOP when they live elsewhere.
I read some time ago that pregnant Indian immigrant women in the UK travelled to India in groups to have a TOP after they found out they were pregnant with a female foetus.
It’s sad that there’s nobody in these women’s lives who loves these them enough to say, “Hey, you don’t need to go through an abortion, your baby is going to be special no matter what the gender is.”

HRS,
If we look at the state Kerala, where women have a higher status than elsewhere in India, we also see far fewer female foeticide.

The more equal and educated women become, the better it is for everybody and for the country.
The Indian govt is acknowledging that educating girls is important because they now give an incentive to women by offering free education for one girl in every family.
I think the Indian government really has to adopt a zero-tolerance policy by enforcing the ban on dowries, which would help a great deal.

As for your denial that girls/women in India/China are being treated as well as boys/men- I’ve refuted that life-expectancy argument already. Stop repeating the same arguments and ignoring the obvious.
Someone I know and who’s involved in charity regularly visits orphanages in certain parts of India-these are full of girls (and only very few boys) who have been dumped there by their parents just because they’re girls.

Celivia,
It doesn’t require much education. It requires education of doctors not to tell women if their unborn baby is male or female.

That type of education is probably necessary in this country also, before aware and loving feminists such as Billie start believing that it is necessary to abort baby boys, because they are male.

The abandoning of little girls and boys in India is definitely a cause for concern, and India is now pleading for other countries to adopt such children (if you didn’t know).

However so many countries that could afford to adopt such children now prefer to spend taxpayer money on expensive, normally futile, ethically questionable, and feminist supported IVF, so that single women can have a baby without a father.

At the end of the year, women are living longer than men in most countries, including India and China. As an aware, loving, biased and gender prejudiced feminist, you automatically attribute this to women being better than men.

Others may attribute it to so many men sacrificing themselves to keep women alive.