In India, Gender Is a Life-and-Death Issue

Newhouse A1
``All girls' parents must pay dowries," Radhika says. "We will take loans and pay it back bit by bit. It might take up to a year's time."

Though dowries are illegal in India, the law is widely ignored and the Devis fear a third daughter will send them over the edge financially. Instead, they hope for a son to one day provide for the family. He would fetch his own dowry upon marriage, take care of his parents as they grow old (India has no social security program) and carry on the family name.

In India's male-dominated society, especially the northwest, this logic is one reason parents abort an estimated half-million female fetuses each year. The practice, called female feticide, has been responsible for at least 10 million female abortions since 1985, according to a controversial study published in January in the Lancet, the British medical journal.

``All kinds of famines, epidemics and wars are nothing compared to this," said Punit Bedi, a New Delhi gynecologist. "In some parts of India, one in every five girls is being eliminated at the fetal stage.

``It is a genocidal situation."
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