Police in India shut down another illegal sex-selection abortion operation Wednesday in Karimnagar, India.
Police raided the clinic of doctors Shivaram and his wife Aruna after they suspected them of aiding in performing sex-selection abortions, according to The Hindu. Police said they caught the two doctors performing scans on pregnant women to determine the sex of their unborn babies before the women had abortions.
Here’s more from the report:
Police sources said that Ayurvedic doctors Shivaram and his wife Aruna opened the Sai Venkateshwara nursing home in Mankammathota and conducted scanning of the sex of the foetus and disclosed them to the pregnant women for a payment of ₹ 8,000 – ₹ 10,000 per case. After knowing about the gender of the foetus, the pregnant women resorted to abortion, thereby causing female foeticide.
According to Police Commissioner V. B. Kamalasan Reddy, on the basis of credible information, the police deployed a decoy with the help of a pregnant woman and caught the doctors .
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It is the second medical center to be investigated in India this year for performing or assisting in illegal sex-selection abortions. In March, police arrested a doctor at a Maharashtra hospital after they uncovered the bodies of 19 aborted baby girls and a woman died in a botched abortion.
Indian police uncovered a similar practice last August in the state of Tiruvannamalai. According to The New Indian Express, police raided an illegal abortion practice where sex-selection abortions appeared to be going on. When authorities entered the building, they noted that all three of the unborn babies who were aborted that day were girls, according to the report.
The illegal practice, operated by a couple and their son, covertly brought women to their home where the women paid 5,000 rupees (about $75) for a scan, possibly to determine the sex of the child, and then another 7,000 rupees (about $105) for the abortion, according to the report.
In September, LifeNews reported about another gruesome case where an Indian woman’s in-laws allegedly poured gas on her and tried to set her on fire because they believed she was pregnant with a girl.
The targeting of girls for sex-selection abortions and infanticide has become a global problem. As LifeNews previously reported, sex-selection abortions are commonplace in nations like China and India where women choose to or sometimes are forced to abort female unborn babies because of a cultural preference for boys.
The results have led to extreme gender imbalances in the population. The 2011 India census data showed there were 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under age 7, according to the BBC. In some parts of the country, the problem was even worse. For example, in the Indian state of Tiruvannamalai, men outnumbered women at a ratio of 1,000 to 878.
Sex-selection abortions are illegal in India, but not in most of the United States and Canada. Just a few states in the U.S. prohibit abortions based on the unborn baby’s sex.
