By Dave Andrusko
AsiaNews is reporting that an Indian man stands accused of killing his pregnant wife whom he had beaten for refusing to abort their third child, who, like their first two children, was a girl.
After tests revealed that the unnamed woman would have a girl, “Prakash Chair told his wife last Tuesday to have an abortion,” AsiaNews reported. “When she refused, he beat her.”
Rushed to the hospital by neighbors the woman died from her injuries the following day. “Prakash has been arrested, but he denies ever approaching a hospital to determine the sex of the foetus,” according to the story.
The backdrop, of course, is sex-selection abortion. Although ultrasound screenings are against the law in India, the laws are routinely
flouted. There are now only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys, the worst sex imbalance since the country’s independence in 1947.
The story extensively quoted Dr Pascoal Carvalho, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
“The deep-rooted social evil of gender prejudice in India leaves 600,000 Indian girls missing every year,” he told AsiaNews. “Women have been
under tremendous pressure to produce male heirs,” because boys “are seen as wage-earners and future family leaders and traditional inheritor, while the threat of the infamous dowry system adds to the belief that baby girls are a burden.”
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