India Woman Forced Into Six Sex-Selection Abortions

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 23, 2012   |   4:14PM   |   Washington, DC

A woman in India who was forced into six sex-selection abortions by family members obsessed with male babies is now using her experience to help other victims and prosecute doctors who illegally use ultrasounds to reveal the gender of an unborn child to a male-minded couple.

Amisha Bhatt, 36, from Vastrapur, is profiled in a new Times of India report discussed how laws preventing the black market use of ultrasound are not fully stopping doctors who are maintaining a secret list of patients who are being sent by in-laws for abortions. Bhatt is taking on her family, the newspaper reports:

Bhatt had already filed a police case against her husband and in-laws for harassment. But in order to expose this practice Bhatt filed RTI applications with the health officers of two districts seeking details about her abortion case and other such cases. The explosive information exposed a nefarious nexus between gynecologists and sonography clinics involved in illegal abortion and sex determination tests. Bhatt found that her name did not figure in the elaborate list of patients who had undergone sonography tests.

“This meant that the government had no information on the tests conducted on me, as mandated under the PCPNDT Act. There may have been many such women like me. The doctors were maintaining a secret list of patients on which sex determination tests were being conducted,” says Bhatt.

Due to Bhatt’s expose, licences of two doctors’ were canceled for malpractice and the state government reviewed the requirements for doctors to submit their monthly reports.

Bhatt married Priyavadan Bhatt, a resident of Anand, in the year 2000. Between 2001 and 2009, she was subjected to six abortions. She even gave birth to Kamya, a girl child. Bhatt was sent to clinics in Anand, Vadodara and Godhra.

Gendercide, the intentional destruction of women and girls via sex-selection abortions and female infanticides in places like India and China, is rampant.

In a recent case that highlights the brutality and depravity of sex-selection abortions in India, a new report shows how a man tied up and beat his wife to cause her third consecutive sex-selection abortion.

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According to the Hindustan Times, a 30-year-old housewife is now struggling for her life after her husband and in-laws beat her repeatedly for a third abortion in a row because she was found to be carrying an unborn baby girl. Police official Shaikh Usman said the victim, named Munni, thought was carrying a girl baby because a local religious official predicted she would not carry a boy baby until her seventh pregnancy by her husband, who proceeded to tie her up and beat her in an attempt to induce a miscarriage.

As families in India and other countries prefer boys over girls and abort female babies at high rates, the sex ratios are skewed. According to Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Mara Hvistendahl, India’s ratio is 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the ratio is 121:100. And as the Her.meneutics story demonstrated, the girls who manage to live are made to feel rejected.

India, like other Asian countries, has a strong cultural preference for male children, which is a huge factor in the occurrence of sex-selective abortions. Yet those who claim to advocate for women’s rights and respect for the female gender continue to support the death of millions of baby girls by allowing abortion to continue. The lack of respect for the dignity of human life, and the willingness to murder the innocent unborn, is the problem that must be overcome in India, and around the world.