Genocide of India's daughters
3rd July 2006

Ten million female foetuses have been illegally aborted in India by mothers desperate to bear a son. What will become of this nation of ever fewer women? ANNE SEBBA investigates:

May you be the mother of a hundred sons - this is the Sanskrit blessing given to a Hindu woman in India on her wedding day. And the minute she falls pregnant, there is the traditional chanting of mantras by the other women of the family, calling for the foetus, if female, to be transformed into a male.

Increasingly, such age-old beliefs are becoming a curse in India, as, in this deeply patriarchal society, women have become obsessed with giving birth only to sons.

‘Asking me why I need a son, instead of a daughter, is like asking me why I have two eyes and not one,’ says one woman in the northern district of Haryana, who has just had an abortion after discovering that the baby she was carrying was female. the rest