Usually pregnancy is a thrilling, amazing experience for women and their families.
Now picture that this great experience of a child coming into the world being ruined.
Having people asking what gender the baby is because if it is a girl, she will most likely be killed at birth or the mother will be forced to have an abortion.
How is this human rights? Or gender equality? It's not.
And this is happening in countries in the World today.
The video above is the shocking reality for women and families living in China and India. Countless numbers of newborn baby girls are killed, or abandoned because these countries culture favour sons. As you can see in the video some parents willingly commit infanticide killing any female children they birth, but some are not given the choice and their daughters are brutally killed whether they agree or disagree. This is the beginning to a argument I would like to make about how it is not right to kill newborn babies, specifically when it is just based on their gender.
It is shocking how some of the people shown in this video take something as serious as killing a child or forcing a woman to undergo an abortion so lightly.
For example, the women who talks about how she has "killed eight girl children" with a smile, and laugh in her voice (picture below is the same women explaining how she would strangle her daughters). Also, another male in the video shows how they use cloth towels to suffocate newborn girls as if its instructions to tie your shoes.
The culture of the people in these countries favours males. In India they believe that men are connected to wealth and new daughter in laws, but females are connected to loss of wealth and daughters since they would leave the family once they were married. Similar to this in China with the one child policy they want males to carry on their traditions and name. This mindset of these people is what leads families and communities to kill or abandon females because they value males more, while females are a burden.
To get more information on this documentary you can visit: http://www.itsagirlmovie.com
Another point to be made about the killing of girls in India and China is that this is most definitely not gender equality. Most people in the world believe that gender equality has greatly improved since the past, and it indeed has in many ways. However, if we are allowing for other countries to kill newborn children, have abortions, or abandon children just based on their gender then this is a huge step back from gender equality. In both of these countries female infanticide is socially acceptable and ignored by the government. Although China is having large issues with overpopulation there are many other ways to deal with this problem. The people in these countries could be better educated on pregnancy and given more resources for birth control like giving them condoms or giving women the birth control pill. Also, in India the government should be more involved with stopping female infanticide rather than ignoring it. These things could help lower the birth rate without having gendercide involved.
Gendercide is defined as the systematic killing of a specific sex (usually females). This is a large issue in places like India and China with women being forced, or willingly, having abortions or their newborn baby is killed because it's gender is female. A huge problem with gendercide is that if they keep killing females eventually there will not be enough women to reproduce with the males in future generations.
An important question to ask would be that would it be better for these female children to be aborted or killed at birth or live a life of neglect being abandoned by their own families?
Although they would be alive they would either be abandoned or neglected and would have a high chance of death throughout their lives.
