Killing of infants, especially females (sex-selective infanticide) and those who are deformed, and still practised in some countries, as well as being evident in some other primates species. The practice is not restricted to infants, but also occurs prenatally. In these circumstances, it is referred to as ‘feticide’: the deliberate or incidental killing of a fetus. When it is carried out on a sex- selective basis, the term ‘gendercide’ has come into use. Female feticide continues to be a major concern in parts of India and mainland China, even though prenatal sex determination is officially banned in both countries. In both countries, it has largely been fuelled by the availability of prenatal ultrasound scans starting in the 1980s, and to a lesser extent by amniocentesis (introduced into India in 1974). A UNICEF report, published in 1984 on abortions after prenatal sex determination in Bombay, stated that 7999 out of 8000 aborted foetuses were females. More recently, a study published in the Lancet, 2006, 367 (January 21), consisting of a survey of 1.1 million households, found fewer girls than boys are born in India, with around 500,000 female fetuses being aborted nationally in 2005, and an estimate that around 10 million such abortions were carried out over the last two decades. The outcome is an alteration of the sex ratio of children under the age of 7 years in India to 108 (boys):100 (females) according to the Indian census of 2001. In the 1991 census, this ratio was 106:100. However, there are large regional differences, with the ratio exceeding 110:100 in ten of India’s 26 states. One reason offered for female feticide and infanticide in India is that sons provide a sort of economical insurance for the family in that they are expected to do most of the work in the fields. More likely, however, another explanation along these lines has to do with the institution of dowry, according to which the family of a bride has to pay large sums of money to the family in which she will live after marriage. Despite being outlawed, it is still widely practised among the Hindu and Sikh communities. Educational or economic factors cannot be the only explanation as the number of girls has declined even as incomes have risen in the relatively prosperous states of Punjab and Haryana. According to a report released by the WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific in 1997, more than 50 million women were estimated to be ‘missing’ in China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to the government‚was ‘one child per family‘ policy introduced in 1979. In 1994, the sex ratio in China was 117:100, and remained the same ten years later. As in India, there are marked regional differences, with some provinces having a sex ratio of 130:100. The predicted effect of female feticide and infanticide is that countries such as India and China will be confronted with serious social problems in the not-too-distant future. On the one hand, there will be millions of men unable to find wives, and the other that this will lead to an exacerbation of the problem of an ageing population in the future. It has been estimated that by 2020, there could be more than 35 million such males in China, 25 million in India, and 4 million in Pakistan. In China, for example, where in some parts there up to 20% more boys than girls, press reports suggest that as a consequence of the shortage of young women, many men buy foreign brides, some of them kidnapped, especially from Burma and Vietnam for prices ranging from $600 and $4000. Moreover, estimates with regard to the growing ageing population point to each retired person in China being supported by six workers in 2020, and by one to three in 2050, from the present figure of one to ten. A non-fatal alternative to fatal feticide and infanticide is sex-selective abandonment. In China, about 95% of children in orphanages are healthy females whose biological parents are still alive.
See Child death, Fetal death, Infant death, Neonatal death, Sex ratio