The Indian government plans to set up a series of orphanages to raise unwanted baby girls in a bid to halt the widespread practice of aborting preborn babies that are determined to be girls.
"It is a matter of international and national shame for us that India ... still kills its daughters," Chowdhury [Renuka Chowdhury, minister of women and child development for the Indian government] said, adding, "What we are saying to the people is have your children, don't kill them. And if you don't want a girl child, leave her to us."
Despite 1994's Prenatal Determination Act, which bans the use of technologies such as ultrasounds and sonograms for the purpose of sex-selective abortion as well as prohibiting advertisements for prenatal sex determination, some 7,000 fewer girls are born daily in India than should be.
Click on the title of this post for a review of this matter by the Kaiser Network and click here for a related story from the International Herald Tribune.
