[CarrotAndStick]

You are confused here, it is not Hinduism that drives these people to commit this crime, it is economics, at least 'idiot-economics'. It is the prospect of the parents having to take care of a child in rural India which is highly male-dominated, when they themselves are poor, and do not believe that a girl child can succeed in life. But if you look at the rest of India, women have every chance to succeed. Fools who masquerade as humans(these village-folk kind who get abortion done to female foetuses), don't get it at all. But this is rapidly changing. Remember, many in America thought it inept to allow women to vote, not centuries ago. Such ills arise out of poverty, and that's precisely why poverty is such an ill. As for the terrorist Islamics, that's a whole different story.

[Bush2000]

Favoring male offspring is hardly a new thing in these cultures. It dates back thousands of years. Families want a male heir so that they can pass on their wealth. Female offspring (in the absence of male offspring) cause wealth transfers to occur to other families. Modern technology gives these people the ability to "choose" whether to keep a child based upon its sex. And I agree with other posters: In the long run, this will hurt these countries because their population growth simply won't be able to keep up other developing nations where female/male birth rates are close to 50/50. Individuals don't see this because they are myopically focusing on their particular desire to promote male offspring -- but it has huge consequences to their entire society. Thankfully, this trend doesn't seem to be occurring in the United States -- which means that America will continue to dominate.