Abortion

6 Pages 1583 Words

Coping with Abortion

In the book “Arranged Marriage” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni one chapter talks about a story of an Indian women having to run from her family because they wanted her to have an abortion. To be more specific one author states in his journal “Factors Affecting Sex-Selective Abortions in India,” Dr. Retherford calls this type of Abortion in India exactly what the title states Sex-Selective Abortions. Sex-Selective Abortions are an interesting topic, especially when I started to read the story about abortion in the India culture. In this paper I will be explaining sex-selective abortions, referring to Dr. Retherford, Dr. Rita Patel, and Dr Joe Hubbard’s articles and journals, introduce the chapter in the book “Arranged Marriage” that is related to sex selective abortions. Understanding Sex-Selective Abortions in India is a lot more interesting then people think.
Sex-selective abortion depends on the ability of a physician or technician to determine the sex of the fetus before birth, which is something that could not be done reliably before the invention of ultrasound, amniocentesis, and chorionic villus sampling. (Retherford, 2003) The difference between a sex-selective abortion and an abortion undertaken for reasons that are independent of the sex of the fetus is that the individuals and/or families who choose sex-selective abortion would not be terminating the pregnancy if the fetus was not a member of the unwanted sex. In India, this practice is only the latest manifestation of a long history of gender bias, which shows historically in the low and declining population ratio of women to men.
This idea of sex-selective abortions does not only happen in India but it is also widely known in Asian countries. These Asian countries, which include China, Vietnam and India, show problems with gender-biased killings of their children. Occurrences of unwanted sex killings have been on the rise for...