Female Infanticide: The World's Biggest Killer

Suicide, homicide and genocide are all common terms which are used frequently in the media, but what about infanticide? What is it, where is it, and why does it happen?

 Occurring throughout both first and third world countries, to commit infanticide is to kill a child within a year of birth, and with the addition of the word female it is soon recognised as a world-wide phenomenon that has been described as the biggest form of mass murder seen in history.

Dating back to 200 BC in Greece, only one per cent of families living in Delphi had two daughters – this was equivalent to the town having 118 sons to just 28 daughters. The reasoning for this lies in the low value of females in society, as they were perceived as a burden to the family and could not provide care for their parents once married. Since then, more than twenty five singular societies have committed and encouraged the infanticide of defective babies, specifically male babies with physical disabilities and the majority of female babies.

Perhaps the world’s most iconic country by the way of female infanticide is China, having placed a one-child policy on the country in 1979 .This measure  was intended to control the drastically increasing population, however it resulted in the ratio between boys and girls steepening to an unfathomable degree.

U.S.A. stats for 2005, Alan Guttmacher Institute; Australian stats for 2003, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; Canadian stats for 2005, Statistics Canada; China stats from China Daily, 2009; U.K. stats for 2004, U.K. Department of Health (The Epoch Times)

At the time of inception, the ratio between boys and girls was already slightly unbalanced, with 106 boys to every one hundred girls, however in the next thirty years the gap grew to a not unprecedented 130 boys per hundred girls. This sharp increase has had some serious consequences for the republic, none of which are going unnoticed.

An upward trend of post-pubescent males who cannot find wives is resulting in large amounts of crime across rural China, with violence escalating at a rate which will cause high levels of damage across the country. It is estimated that in twenty years, there will be forty million unmarried men in China, which has spiked the levels of bride smuggling in the country, as well as an influx of foreign women attempting to marry into China in order to benefit from its economic boom. The imbalance between males and females will result in a slow growth of new generations, as sexual activity is lessened. The government perceives this as a positive step in retarding the growth of the nation.

Another country where female infanticide is a constant occurrence is India, a land where the saying, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbour’s garden,” is often used. The country sports a boy to girl ratio of 927 girls to every one thousand boys. Spiritually, it is believed in areas such as Usampalatti and Tamil Nadu that killing a daughter guarantees the conception of a boy, and it is not uncommon for females in a village to assist in the burial of a murdered daughter, as they can sympathise (and often empathise) with what the mother is going through. Most common in Hindu states, female infanticide is a way to escape having to save for a dowry when a daughter is married off. This very idea was used in an advertising campaign by sex-selective abortionists, saying “Spend 500 rupees today and save 500,000 tomorrow.”

A sign advertising abortions in Calcutta, India (source)

This clear imbalance between the two sexes will lead to similar increases in violence in rural areas as in China. Furthermore, both countries have seen the highest rates of suicide in women across the entire world, with 148 women out of every one thousand in India murdering herself, and suicide becoming the most common form of death for women aged between 20 and 40 in China.

These effects further the gap between females and males in each country, resulting in less men finding brides, an occurrence which is deemed dangerous as studies reveal that males who lack nurturing from their parents as a child and a relationship with a sexual partner through adulthood result in higher violence rates.

The act of female infanticide does not only affect the child who dies, the mother who commits the act or the family who live with the knowledge that they’ve assisted in the death of one of their own, but goes on to affect entire cities and countries. This ancient prejudice against females is an act that needs to stop, before the future of girls is wiped out forever.