India's unwanted girls (BBC)

India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.

Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.

In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.

Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.

"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
***
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13264301
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13331808
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13385727
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13421267


There are four closely related stories -- you can click on the tabs directly beneath the title

:-(

is a shortage of wives for the overpopulation of men. Then the men can all go screw themselves - literally.

which is to steal girls and women away from their rightful families to be brides for the little princes.

As I mentioned there : there are even parts of the UK where NHS ultrasounds for expectant mothers were blocked years ago for this very reason. To ensure no hint of bias , where applicable , it was obviously blocked for all women in those areas. When my own children were born , late sixties / early seventies we didn't give a stuff which sex they would be - just that they would be born safely and ok which they were. Funnily enough because our first was a daughter I hoped the second would be too but it was a boy and he'll be 40 tomorrow. :)