WASHINGTON // Millions of sex-selective abortions in India have skewed gender ratios, and the origins of the problem can be traced to US-supported population-control strategies decades ago, a US congressional panel heard.
India's gender imbalance has grown despite the country's strong economic growth. The 2011 census showed 914 girls for every 1,000 boys younger than 6. That was a drop from 927 girls for every 1,000 boys a decade previously.
Experts say such ratios are the result of abortions of female foetuses, or sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. Part of the reason Indians favour sons is the enormous expense of marrying off girls.
On Tuesday the house subcommittee on global health and human rights heard testimony from experts on the issue during a hearing titled, "India's Missing Girls".
Matthew Connelly, a history professor at Columbia University in New York, said it was western development professionals focused on controlling global population growth in the 1960s who first promoted sex-selective abortion. He recounted how the US-based population council instructed Indian doctors on how to determine the sex of a foetus, and publicly advocated sex-selective abortions, which were being systematically performed in India by the late 1970s.
"It is precisely because the US took a leading role in advocating population control worldwide that we cannot pretend that we have no responsibility for the consequences," Prof Connelly said.
Speaking ahead of the hearing, he said that international organisations engaged in family planning are today motivated by ideals of reproductive rights and health, but there is lingering suspicion of public-health programmes in countries such as India because of what happened in the past.
Republican Chris Smith, a staunch opponent of abortion and the panel's chair, acknowledged that India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has decried the falling proportion of girls in his country. But Mr Smith railed against what he called the systematic "extermination" of female foetuses and the authorities' failure to enforce laws against it. He said that had led to a dearth of women that fuelled human trafficking as men sought marriage partners.
Sabu George, a researcher and member of India's campaign against sex selection, said that over the past decade, more than 6 million female foetuses were eliminated before birth in India. He predicted that the numbers will rise in the coming decade unless there was a more determined effort to enforce existing legislation, which he said is being implemented only in the wealthiest state of Maharashtra, where the proportion of girls is even lower than the national average.
Mallika Dutt, from the rights group Breakthrough, defended the rights of Indian women to have access to legal abortions.
"Given the many ways in which women are controlled and exploited and abused it's very important for women to have full control over their own reproduction," she said.
* Associated Press