This subject came to light for me quite awhile ago and what I find additionally disturbing is that India discourages and even disallows adoption of Indian infants/children to the west. I know, because I looked into the possibility of adopting an Indian girl orphan or surrendered child.

How can this possibly make sense?

Outrage might be directed at the idea of bartering in arranged marriage, but who cares what the reason for abortion is, as long as both parents consent? Yes? What do Indian women in Rajasthan (which only accounts for 44 million of India's total population) think about the male/female ratio? Is this endemic to this one state, or is it an Indian issue?

Also, with a population of 280 million, the United States performed 1.31 million abortions in 2000, according to the interweb. So if we assume that the number of male abortions in India is fewer than the female number (to which I believe the author would agree), then there is at most 1 million abortions in a country of 1.1 billion. Make of that what you will.

So, the parents who didn't abort their female fetuses are now "like kings"?

I bet a lot of people would like to be "like kings".

I bet that will make people think twice about aborting their female fetuses.

Seems like a self-correcting problem to me.

This actually *is* affording girls some power. Think about it. If you are very valuable to your father, is he as likely to abuse you, teach you you are worthless, murder you for getting raped, or in general treat you like dog turds as if you were not valuable?

Girls being valuable to their fathers *does* directly translate into a small amount of additional status and social protection for women, because parents' attitudes toward their girls have a lot to do with what women are allowed to do in life.

A girl who is raised to believe she will be a burden on her family and they will have to pay a lot of money to get rid of her is in much worse shape than a girl who is raised to believe she will bring her family wealth and help her brothers to get married as well. Admittedly it's still a far cry from sexual equality, but it does strongly imply that the pendulum is going to swing back -- that the status of girls will improve because the status of fathers who have girls is improving, and then men will stop encouraging their wives to have abortions of girls, so the sex ratio will return to normal -- but by that time the status of women may have permanently gotten somewhat better.

I would also imagine that in a society where women are valuable to their fathers for their marriageability, perhaps, just perhaps, laws against rape will shift toward heavy penalties to the rapists, as the rapists will be seen as committing serious property crimes against the families of young women. Societies with honor killings tend to be dowry societies -- you have to pay money to get rid of your daughter and if she's not a virgin no one wants her, so you kill her to get the burden she now represents off your hands. Bride price societies do not murder raped girls (though there is a nasty tendency to make them marry their rapists, and I hope India manages to avoid that.)

This is the first time I've seen any *actual* evidence of something good for women coming out of this sex selection thing.

They say that lying in the gutter is an attractive proposition when you're down in the sewer, and that looks to be the case vis-a-vis India's relationship with her female children.

Which is to say that from an American perspective, the system described (two families trading marriages, the end of the dowry) is wrong [Yes, I an known to toss around judgements of cultural facets I dislike] it can only be considered a step up. A girl child now represents a net-zero as opposed to a net-loss, and indeed can even be used as a bargaining chip to improve family status by marriage into a more influential family that may not have been 'cursed' with female children that now finds itself less powerful, in the new system.

Yes, it's a long way from there up, but at least they're not trending down with respect to women's rights like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the USA.

I don't think this will afford any power to women in India.

The more that women are seen as a commodity rather than as a person, the more danger they are in. These girls will not be valued as people, but as products to be marketed. I would think that India will probably start to see some of the same problems that are occuring in China, with rural men kidnapping women to find wives. The whole thing sounds very The Handmaid's Tale to me, and doesn't bode well for women's safety.

Less evil female harpies = more of a chance for him!

The enforcement of laws against gender-selective abortion is an impossible task in India -- the technology is there and readily available. Declaring this practice to be illegal isn't enough of an incentive. The greater problem is that, particularly in these remote villages, Indian parents know their girl children will be born to an unbearable and heartbreaking life.

In a culture that readily accepts arranged marriages, the practice of "trading" daughters with other families could ultimately be beneficial: bringing your neighbor's daughter into your own household can serve as insurance against dowry-death and similar inlaw-inflicted cruelty your own daughter might otherwise suffer in the house of a stranger.

Hmmmm, so allowing abortion leads to a huge increase in the murder of female babies? That is just shocking!

So please tell me how abortion is a moral good that is completely justified, and women should be able to abort for any reason that falls into their brains, including killing girls disproportionately?

There is nothing that reduces a woman to a commodity more than saying that she is expendable before birth, to be thrown out in the trash because she is inconvenient. A society that cherished women would not allow them to become murderers, of their own sex or the opposite.