Little girls lost

Today begins a month that focuses on women's rights. I would like to acknowledge this with reflecting on the lives of women who never got to be born.

Technology now allows us to abort children based on their gender as the gender of the baby can be determined through ultrasound or aminiocentesis. It is not a common practice in North America but is disturbingly common in other nations such as China, Japan, India, Taiwan, and South Korea. Sex selection in favour of females is rare and/or non-existent. The babies that are being aborted are female.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported in early 2006 that there may have been close to 10 million female fetuses aborted in India over the past 20 years. Perhaps contrary to popular expectations, the study also reported that sex selective abortion is more common among the wealthy and among educated women than among the poor and the uneducated.

Millions of children are being aborted for the "crime" of being female and yet you rarely hear western feminists talk about this devastating reality.

So today when people are reflecting on what feminism let us remember the little girls that never got to be born, that never got to be cradled in their mother's arms, that never got to learn to read their first book, who will never walk down the aisle, who will never experience their first day of University, and who will never share their gifts and talents with the world.

An absolute tragedy.