Indian "Genocide" of Girls by Abortion Exposed in New Book "Disappearing Daughters"
UNICEF said India kills almost 7,000 girls per day by abortion
By Hilary White
BANGALORE, July 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Unwanted girl babies in India are killed after birth by a variety of methods including being smothered with a pillow or cloth, drowned in milk, fed poisoned seeds or burned alive in sealed mud pots; but according to a recently published book, the most popular form of femicide is now abortion, with the assistance of ultrasound to determine the child's sex.
"Disappearing Daughters", a new book by an Indian woman journalist, Gita Aravamudhan, published by Penguin Books, calls "female foeticide" "an organized crime."
"The ultrasound machine has mutated into an instrument of murder," she said. Aravamudhan writes in the preface that the book started as a journalistic "story" like any other, but soon escalated into the biggest issue she had ever investigated. "Female infanticide is akin to serial killing. But female foeticide was more like a holocaust. A whole gender is getting exterminated."
A recent report by UNICEF said India kills almost 7,000 girls per day by abortion. Recent statistics show that the population of India is heavily weighted towards males with only 927 females for every 1,000 males, a contrast from the usual 1050 females in other countries. UK-based medical journal, the Lancet estimates the number of girls killed by abortion in India at 10 million over the last 20 years.
"It is a silent and smoothly executed crime," Aravamudhan writes, "which leaves no waves in its wake. It is happening while we, as a nation, slumber. In some parts of the country almost two generations of women have been exterminated before I completed this book and there is still no solution in sight."
In an interview with The Hindu, Aravamudhan, described as a writer on "gender" issues for 27 years, said she was shocked to find that female "foeticide" was most common among the wealthy and well educated.
"Foeticide happened among the rich, the powerful, the educated; those who were aware of family planning!…There was a deep link between female foeticide and factors like wealth, education, success of family planning, and medical progress," she said.
With most international aid organisations working in India pushing abortion and smaller families, a book such as this contrasts with official government-sponsored population control campaigns. LifeSiteNews.com editor John Henry Westen, during a trip to India last year, reported that even among the strongly Catholic Christian population of Kerala, small families are considered "moral."
Westen interviewed Sunny Kattukaran, the leader of a pro-life group in India known as Trust God (Pro-Life) Ministry, who laid the blame squarely on western-based population control movements.
"The Americans, the UN and other funding agents, when they release some funds as loans they ask our statistics on birth control, and insist on family planning criteria, only then do they pump money," Kattukaran said.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
7,000 Unborn Girls Die From Sex-Selection Abortion Daily in India
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/dec/06121401.html
India Pro-Life Leader Explains How West Hurts India with Imposed Population Control
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06081701.html
Colorado Pro-life Group Introduces Amendment Recognizing "Personhood" of Unborn Child
By Peter J. Smith
DENVER, Colorado, July 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pro-life leaders in Colorado are laying the groundwork to challenge the heart of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision with a constitutional amendment that would completely outlaw abortion by recognizing the personhood of the unborn child.
WorldNetDaily reports that the amendment proposed by Colorado Equal Rights would define "any human being from the moment of fertilization" as a "person" under article 2 of the state Constitution.
The title given to the proposed human life amendment reads: "Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term 'person' to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as 'person' is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?"
"We're defining when personhood begins," Mark Meuser, spokesman for Colorado Equal Rights told WND. "In this state, there would be no abortions."
"Our goal is to take this all the way to the Supreme Court, and argue the personhood of the preborn baby. When we were writing this, we wanted to have a singular focus so that nobody is confused," Meuser said. "We want to force the argument that has been avoided for 34 years by the U.S. Supreme Court."
Meuser says that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has a glaring weakness that for the past 34 years has not been exploited by the pro-life movement. In that decision, Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe wrote, "If this suggestion of personhood [for the unborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."
The pro-life initiative passed its latest challenge after the state's Title Board ruled 3-0 that the amendment successfully met Colorado's "single subject" rule and could not be construed as "misleading."
However the proposed human life amendment will likely face a court challenge from pro-abortion groups determined not to take any chances. If no appeal is made within seven days, Colorado for Equal Rights could begin to collect the 76,000 signatures they need to get the amendment on the ballot for 2008.
Meuser nevertheless told WND that he was confident that the human life amendment had a chance of success, but much would depend on the response of Catholics and Evangelicals and the collaboration of pro-life groups in Colorado.
"We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think it could happen," Meuser said. "History shows if we are able to give our vision to evangelical Christians and Catholics, and show them that vision, they will turn out and this thing will pass."
See the original article on WorldNetDaily:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56764
More information on the proposed amendment and Colorado Equal Rights can be obtained from their website:
http://www.coloradoequalrights.com/
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"In Cordibus Jesu et Mariae"
