The United Nations estimates there are as many as 200 million girls missing from the world today — killed, aborted or abandoned, simply because they are females. India and China alone “eliminate” more girls than are born in the United States every year.
In India, the desire for male children has led to widespread sex-selection abortions targeting females. On average, one girl a minute is aborted in India just because she is female. Infanticide — the murder of baby girls who survive birth — is also widely practiced in some areas. According to The Invisible Girl Project, “Infanticide is so widely practiced in some areas of India, that the mortality rate for girls between the ages of 1-5 is 75% higher than the mortality rate for boys of the same age.” Girls and women also die from neglect, lethal violence, and dowry killings. There are 37 million more men than women in India, a statistic that has contributed to widespread human trafficking; women and girls are regularly sold in India’s brothels.
In China, the country’s one-child policy has led to 18 million more boys than girls under the age of 15. One out of every six girls is lost to gendercide. All Girls Allowed says that, “Gendercide, defined as ‘the systematic extermination of a particular gender,’ has become widespread in China. With the use of illegal ultrasound equipment, couples can determine the sex of their child and choose to abort the female fetus. In other cases, midwives have been reported to deliver “stillborn” girls by strangling the female infant with the umbilical cord as she is delivered.”
New York Times contributor Mai Jian described the brutality of the forced abortions and forced sterilization, particularly in rural villages in China: “Village family-planning officers vigilantly chart the menstrual cycle and pelvic-exam results of every woman of childbearing age in their area. If a woman gets pregnant without permission and is unable to pay the often exorbitant fine for violating the policy, she risks being subjected to a forced abortion.”
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, said that China’s one-child policy “causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth.”
Human rights advocate Markus Redding from Columbia University has called gendercide “our generation’s holocaust — a systematic extermination of millions just because they are females.” He said, “Most people can’t believe it. They can’t believe the numbers. When you talk about a Nazi holocaust occurring right now, people are in denial about it.” Redding said it’s a direct violation of human rights and against international law and we must mobilize the international community to end this abuse of women.
It’s A Girl, a feature-length documentary that focuses on gendercide and forced abortion in India and China, was recently presented to Amnesty International’s film series against gender violence by Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. The documentary is part of the group’s “Save a Girl” campaign that includes providing monthly support for women at risk of aborting or abandoning their baby girls and emergency help for women in danger as a result of oppressive coercive family planning policies.
Littlejohn says we must “stop the violence” and end the war on women.
You can watch the trailer for It’s a Girl below:
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