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Article: For India's daughters, a dark birth day; Infanticide and sex-selective abortion yield a more skewed gender ratio.(WORLD)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- February 9, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Uma Girish Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
MADRAS, INDIA -- The oleander plant yields a bright, pleasant flower, but also a milky sap that, if ingested, can be a deadly poison. It's one of the methods families use to kill newborn girls in the Salem District of Tamil Nadu, a part of India notorious for female infanticide.
Though the government has battled the practice for decades, India's gender imbalance has worsened in recent years. Any progress toward halting infanticide, it seems, has been offset by a rise in sex-selective abortions. Too many couples - aided by medical technology, unethical doctors, and weak enforcement of laws ...