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.
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| 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.”
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| 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.
