British Indians still aborting baby girls in UK

Much anecdote about this but no actual statistics.

theworriedwell

Hospital care was shocking where I was in the 70s. I had my second at home as the hospital experience was awful. Following the birth I was put in a linen cupboard with my baby as they had nowhere else to put us.

Yes people think the pre Thatcher era was some kind of golden era for the NHS and it was all brilliant before 1980, but many hospitals were terrible and strikes were even more frequent than in the last few years. I can remember one in North Shields that was so old and dilapidated that had it not been replaced in 1983, it would have been condemned.
While there are issues with some hospitals now, I think the quality of the buildings, the food, patient care, modern medicine and technology are so much better than the late seventies. The staff at my local hospital are almost always very courteous, knowledgeable and approachable.

There are times when I seriously think that God was in fact a woman!
After all who does the most in terms of carrying the child.
This is probably why men make such a song and dance about being a man with a willy.
We don't go around bragging about having a womb! And we have So much hidden strength we don't brandish weapons to prove it. We prove it with living kindness.

Cossy

I had 3 of my 4 children late, 39, 42 & 44. I refused all invasive tests and just had, only with baby 4, a trip to a big London Hospital where new scans were measuring both the baby’s neck and nose for signs of Down’s syndrome, and I formed part of a clinical trial.

All 4 babies were fit and healthy, however in later life the last three have mental health conditions or autism, would never have known before birth, or for many years after.

I too am completely pro-choice, but choice for me was never abort unless both baby and mother’s lives at risk.

What you say is interesting as I thought if a person was going to be autistic then they were autistic from birth.
Maybe that’s what you meant, with them being mildly on the spectrum and managing to conceal it for most of their lives?

I asked AI for the exact statistic

Christians are India's third-largest religious group, making up about 2.3% to 2.4% of the population, with around 28 million adherents, primarily concentrated in Northeast India (states like Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya) and Southern states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu). While a small percentage of the overall population, they form majorities in certain northeastern states, with significant historical roots dating back to the 1st century

I'm not being pedantic but a lot of Indian people practice Christianity

I had 3 of my 4 children late, 39, 42 & 44. I refused all invasive tests and just had, only with baby 4, a trip to a big London Hospital where new scans were measuring both the baby’s neck and nose for signs of Down’s syndrome, and I formed part of a clinical trial.

All 4 babies were fit and healthy, however in later life the last three have mental health conditions or autism, would never have known before birth, or for many years after.

I too am completely pro-choice, but choice for me was never abort unless both baby and mother’s lives at risk.

Wyllow3

The full report does indeed confirm people travel abroad for many of the 400 cases over 5 years.

and its adds that "Groups like Jeena International work to empower women facing coercion and pressure to abort female fetuses".

I do think the O/P seems to rather hint it's an across the board problem in this culture but in fact is actually happening to a very small %.

Of course I don't approve, and believe that as time passes and both sons and daughters are introduced to improved cultural ideas of the status of women and girls that it will fade away. It has with the people I know:

as has been pointed out, it exists in some Christian cultures as well:

for me, the stories above, upthread, based in experiences and knowledge in the 70's and 80's *dont hack it*:

that is going back 40 or 50 years, the in fact is no current adequate evidence that says any more than

"work and campaign to change ideas"

Just as we have a lot of hard work to do within our very own host culture to improve rates of domestic and other abuse of women and girls - attitudes of white males have a great deal to yet be changed including those amongst the police and religious spaces.

Recent case of a wife being raped by her husband and other men whilst drugged up?

*lets look at the issues of how women are regarded as a whole, whatever the culture*

I do not in any way condone this, aborting babies of the “wrong” gender, but I also don’t condone “click bait headlines”

The diagnosis of a 'damaged' baby can also be wrong.

I had my 4th pregnancy when my 3 DC were teenagers or nearly so and I was "older".
I was offered an amniocentesis and swithered quite a while before deciding to go ahead.
DH was dead against it and refused to accompany me to the hospital.
In retrospect its easy to say I shouldn't have gone because I had no intention of terminating the pregnancy.

But did I? I think I was afraid of the impact a disabled child would have on the whole family.

The experience was not nice, it took 3 attempts to extract the fluid, and by the time we got the results it was so late on and I could feel the baby kicking.

There are also a myriad of disabilities undetectable before birth.

We were lucky and I had a perfect baby girl.

Hospital care was shocking where I was in the 70s. I had my second at home as the hospital experience was awful. Following the birth I was put in a linen cupboard with my baby as they had nowhere else to put us.

Iam64

Galaxy makes an important point about maternal care often being poor
I look back to my care in the eighties as a golden age compared to now.
It’s a wider issue with women’s health generally. I don’t disregard the concerns about gender based terminations but I do believe there are significant concerns about poor care often being women throughout our lives

Prenatal care in the community in the 1980s was good but hospital care before, during and after the birth was shocking where we lived at that time.

I'm not sure it is off track, as rules about who should be able to have terminations and when they can be carried out are all part of the original debate. It is not something that exists in a vacuum.

Jane's point about the financial considerations of disability is a good one, as is the impact of having a profoundly disabled child on a family's experience and life chances, and also the life chances of th disabled child should be considered. There are also cultural and religious beliefs about the sanctity of life, of taking responsibility for one's actions and so on, which are not universally held. I realise that all laws are based on that sort of thing (and much UK law is based on Christianity) but there is a difference between making murder or robbery illegal and terminating a pregnancy, unless you take the view that when a foetus is viable then abortion is murder. That is a debatable viewpoint, and although I share it up to a point I don't feel that it should be imposed on others. Also, if we decriminalised murder, we would all be at risk of being killed, but legalised abortion only affects the people concerned. I don't know if risk of being affected by a crime should be taken into account when legislating against it, but maybe that needs to be part of the debate too.

There is no reason why we couldn't pour more resources into supporting women who resist pressure to terminate female pregnancies, and into educating younger generations about sex equality and respect for women. I think that would be a good thing to do if there is a genuine problem in this area (I'd like to see the figures, though, as well as how they show that sex was the reason for the decision to terminate).

I am in no way arguing that aborting girls is a good thing, but how can we have a rule that allows termination based on mental health of the mother and simultaneously refuse a women who is afraid of ill-treatment if she carries a female baby to term? That is a contradiction, isn't it?

JaneJudge

What about aftercare and ongoing care for people born with disabilities?

It’s all very well saying you don’t agree with later terminations but there is so much ignorance about how much this all costs if put into the hands of the government or On the other hand how much it costs for parents and families to raise a child with a disability esp if it’s severe or profound. The lack of support, financial, emotional or otherwise is severely lacking.

So where does it stop? If it's OK to abort a baby at 9 months what about the new born with disabilities that weren't picked up in utero. Is it OK to kill them? I remember my granny telling me that 100 years ago the midwife or local woman who helped deliver babies would be "busy" with the mother and not notice the baby she'd put face down on a pillow was suffocating. Was she doing a kindness to the family or was she a monster who murdered babies? My granny believed it was a kindness but it's a tough decision isn't it.

JaneJudge

What about aftercare and ongoing care for people born with disabilities?

It’s all very well saying you don’t agree with later terminations but there is so much ignorance about how much this all costs if put into the hands of the government or On the other hand how much it costs for parents and families to raise a child with a disability esp if it’s severe or profound. The lack of support, financial, emotional or otherwise is severely lacking.

I share your concerns JaneJudge but now we are getting into the realms of first cousins in the Asian community being allowed to marry and giving birth to children with severe disabilities who will need a lifetime of expensive care, benefits, disability equipment and medical care.

Maybe somebody should start another thread as this one is way off track now.

I’m not suggesting anything btw. I’m just raising another point that might have already been raised.

What about aftercare and ongoing care for people born with disabilities?

It’s all very well saying you don’t agree with later terminations but there is so much ignorance about how much this all costs if put into the hands of the government or On the other hand how much it costs for parents and families to raise a child with a disability esp if it’s severe or profound. The lack of support, financial, emotional or otherwise is severely lacking.

Galaxy makes an important point about maternal care often being poor
I look back to my care in the eighties as a golden age compared to now.
It’s a wider issue with women’s health generally. I don’t disregard the concerns about gender based terminations but I do believe there are significant concerns about poor care often being women throughout our lives

Galaxy

I am about as opposed to assisted dying as it is possible to be ( will probably never vote Labour again because if it, yes I know private members bill etc etc) but I think we do vote for parties partly in terms of morals/ ethics and not just economics don't you think?

Morals and ethics can drive attitudes to economics and how to run society (eg looking after the weak or survival of the fittest), but that's on a macro level. When it comes to individuals, views split outside of those axes. For example a religious person could believe either in higher taxation and universal provision or in low taxation and providing for oneself, but at the same time have very core beliefs about their God's right to give and end life, and be unable to take steps to help anyone to act outside of them. That is fine, but IMO they shouldn't be able to impose those beliefs on those who don't share them.

I think people in these cultures should realise that it’s the man who determines the sex of the baby and therefore they shouldn’t be blaming the wife, not that there is any blame to be attached.
I was just thankful I had two healthy babies irrespective of their gender

I am about as opposed to assisted dying as it is possible to be ( will probably never vote Labour again because if it, yes I know private members bill etc etc) but I think we do vote for parties partly in terms of morals/ ethics and not just economics don't you think?

MaizieD

^ On the whole they will be doing what they think is best, but best for them,..^

That’s an extraordinarily cynical view of the caring professions

Do you think so? I don't - I think that some areas are so bound up with things like religion and culture that people's views are very strong, and often polarised. It's the same with assisted dying. Why MPs get to vote on something like that on behalf of the rest of us is beyond me. We vote them in based on their views on economics and whether they want a bypass around our home towns, not to decide whether we should have the right to end our lives when we want to, yet they make those decisions based on their own moral compass.

Abortion is similarly tricky. It's not something I would do (or I think I wouldn't, but have never been in a situation where I have had to consider it), but I think it should be for others to decide if and when it is right for them, and one woman's reasons will not be the same as another's. A doctor can say whether mother or baby would suffer if the pregnancy went ahead, but no more, really, and a social worker can advise on welfare options that the woman might not have known about, but not what is going on in someone else's head.

I don't think I am being cynical - more realistic.

Casdon

Yes, I understood what you were responding to foxie48, and I agree of course that doctors don’t do ‘what is best for them’. I was adding the dimension I did because that is the really sharp end for all the staff involved. It’s not about them doing what is best for themselves rather than the woman concerned, but ultimately each individual clinician must also act in line with their own beliefs, as the RCOG does make clear.

I think some doctors want to decide what is best for the woman hence me being told I should have an abortion because I was 17, because I thought I might be pregnant with an unplanned pregnancy when I had a six month old baby (I wasn't but had all the signs) because I was 38. Those 2 doctors and one BPAS counsellor thought they knew what was best for me but it's not their place to push their views particularly in an aggressive way when the woman, me, was clearly distressed by the third one.

The opposite should apply as well, fair enough for a doctor not to want to take part but not right to lecture woman about why they disagree. Certainly not right to aggressively shout at the woman.

Casdon

They are fortunately not common, but the most traumatic abortions for staff are those of a foetus with no abnormalities who is on the cusp of viability as a live birth if given neonatal care though foxie48, rather than those with abnormalities such as you describe. Some doctors refuse to be involved in an abortion in those circumstances, and it is also right that they should have that option. It’s a minefield.

I was thinking of people who want no time limits so if that happens there would be more healthy babies being aborted late. I do think medical staff should the option to say no to being involved if that happens.

Yes, I understood what you were responding to foxie48, and I agree of course that doctors don’t do ‘what is best for them’. I was adding the dimension I did because that is the really sharp end for all the staff involved. It’s not about them doing what is best for themselves rather than the woman concerned, but ultimately each individual clinician must also act in line with their own beliefs, as the RCOG does make clear.