FRONTLINE/World | India:The Missing Girl

A Society Out of Balance
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/">http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/</a>

In 2006, when Neil Katz and his wife and traveled to India to live and work, the one issue that kept grabbing their attention was northern India's deep cultural preference for sons over daughters.

The desire for sons can be so great, that some families, after having a girl or two, will abort female fetuses until they bear a son. The practice is called female feticide or sex selection.

In some ways this is a very old tale. Long before medical abortion became available, unwanted girls were killed after birth or not given enough food and medicine to survive. But modern technology has changed that. Ultrasound machines, which make it possible to determine the gender of a fetus, have spread from big city hospitals to small country clinics. Portable machines are taken to remote villages by motorcycle. As a consequence, infanticide has given way to feticide.