In India, a 22-year-old woman has filed a First Information Report (FIR), accusing three men of raping her. The alleged rape took place on June 26th, and the woman said after the rape they forced her to have an abortion.
Tragically, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 93 women are being raped in India every day. Most of these rape victims knew their perpetrators and are aged between 18 and 30 years (15,556) and 14 and 18 years (8,877).
Since it’s not uncommon for rape victims to be forced to abort, pro-life activists spend a great deal of time working to raise awareness on coerced and forced abortion around the world. In the United States alone, statistics show that 64 percent of abortions involve some sort of coercion.
Unfortunately, countries like India and China have a staggering number of forced abortions primarily because women are expected to have male children rather than female and male rapists don’t want their abuse to become public.
In 1994, a federal law called the Pre-Conception Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act was passed in India to ban sex-selective abortions; however, they still take place illegally.
For example, in 2012, family members forced an Indian woman into six sex-selection abortions because she was carrying girls. The abortionist who did the abortions illegally used an ultrasound machine to determine the sex of the child, a practice that health authorities in New Delhi are beginning to crack down on.
Earlier this year, CNN published an article highlighting the severity of sex-selection abortion in India. Author Carl Gierstorfer wrote, “Decades of sex-selective abortion have created an acute lack of women in certain parts of India. Traffickers capitalize on the shortage by recruiting or kidnapping women ensnared in poverty to sell as brides.
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In the state of Uttar Pradesh, there are only 858 girls born for every 1,000 boys, a ratio that doesn’t occur naturally without medical intervention. The northwestern state of Uttar Pradesh is home to one of the largest skewed sex ratios in India.”
Professor Prabhat Jha, who works at the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, conducted a study on abortions in India and also commented on the staggering rate of sex-selection abortion of baby girls.He said, “The number of girls being aborted is increasing and may have reached 12 million with the lower estimate of 4 million over the last three decades.The logic is families are saying if Nature gives us a first boy, then we don’t do anything. But if Nature gives a first girl then perhaps we would consider ultrasound testing and selective abortion for the subsequent children. The preference for boys doesn’t differ between rich and poor, it is similar. But the means to ensure a boy is greater among the educated and the rich.”
Ultimately, even though there isn’t a one-child policy in place in India, their society gives preference to male children. This is why it is critical for pro-life activists to remain vigilant in their work to expose abortionists who perform abortions on these vulnerable women.
Sadly, this tragic story of forced abortion after rape comes after one woman shared her story of how she rejected rape after she was forcibly aborted.
