8mm
Posted on 07/28/2007 12:34:40 PM PDT by wagglebee
The wife of a millionaire industrialist has shocked Indian high society by accusing her husband of forcing her to abort two baby girls after taking illegal tests to determine their gender.
Pooja Salotia even accused her husband, Chirag, of trying to force her to have sex with his two brothers to conceive a male heir for the family machinery business in the state of Gujarat. Police arrested her husband, his two brothers and seven other relatives after Mrs Salotia, 32, filed an official complaint in the city of Ahmedabad on Saturday.
Her allegations against 18 people have sent shockwaves across India by breaking a strict code of silence on such matters and exposing the extent of female foeticide among the urban middle and upper classes.
“This is a common thing even in rich families — a lot of them get their women to abort girls,” Mrs Salotia told The Times from Gujarat, where she has gone into hiding after the release on bail of everyone except her husband. “In our culture, girls are not important. But I can’t tolerate it any more because it’s insulting.”
The killing of newborn girls has been common in rural India, where a daughter is perceived as a financial burden because her family has to pay a hefty dowry when she is married. But since the advent of ultrasound technology, abortion of female foetuses has become increasingly prevalent, not only in rural communities but also among the urban middle classes.
An international team of researchers estimated last year that ten million girls had been aborted in India over the past two decades, while the Indian Medical Association says that five million are aborted annually.
The result is an increasingly severe gender imbalance, with only 927 women for every 1,000 men in India, according to the 2001 census, down from 945 women a decade earlier.
The worst imbalance, however, is in Indian cities where those with money have ready access to private doctors, who take bribes to skirt a 1994 ban on ultrasound gender tests.
A recent survey indicated that there were only 882 women for every 1,000 men in Defence Colony, one of the upmarket districts of Delhi.
Pratibha Patil, India’s first woman President, called at her inauguration on Wednesday for an end to female foeticide, two days after police found 30 female foetuses dumped in a well in the state of Orissa. However, Mrs Salotia is the first woman from Indian high society to admit publicly to the forced abortion of a girl.
The daughter of a government official in Gujarat, she graduated from university with a degree in commerce. Her sister is a doctor and her brother an architect — both based in London. She said that her ordeal began after she gave birth to twin girls in 1997, a year after she married her husband.
She claimed that his family started to harass her and even demanded compensation of £30,000 from her father because she had produced two girls. When she became pregnant again in 1998, her husband forced her to abort at four months after an ultrasound test showed the child to be female, she said. “He said he didn’t want another baby girl. He wants a boy because he’s concerned about who will run our empire — that’s the mentality.”
In 2001 Mrs Salotia was again forced to abort after an illegal gender test revealed she was carrying another girl, she said. After that, she said, her husband started frequenting sexologists and even suggested that she have sex with one of his two brothers as they both had sons. When she refused, and threatened to commit suicide, her husband’s family became even more abusive, beating her regularly.
She said that she endured their treatment until this year for the sake of her twin daughters, Dhvani and Dhruvi, who are now 10. She said she had been living separately from her husband for a month, in one of his six houses, and that he had filed for divorce.
Police said that they were searching for several doctors she accuses of performing her abortions.
GE Medical manufacturers their ultra sound equipment in India for world wide distribution. Demand in India is very strong.
This report should come of no surprise..it happens less with the educated upper class, but still happens.
It is also happening in China.
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Wow! Ain’t we a shining beacon to the world?
“Women, children, and minorities hardest hit”.
LOL
Man, that is beautiful irony. (Not to diminish the tragic truth of that reality.)
The problem with your chart is it shows abortions per number of parents. What would be more informative would be abortions per live births. Sure germany shows a very low abortion rate, but that is because they have a very low birth rate. No one is getting pregnant in germany.
Even so it is still interesting however. Thanks for posting it.
Good for her. I hope she wins.
Hey why do you confuse a number of issues with this local issue of India ?
Multi-culturalism does add a color to the society, as long as that culture is non-imposing and civilized.
If a few Buddhist monks want to pray for world peace in their own small corner of a small shopping mall, how do they threaten your culture ? What you gonna do, shoot them dead or behead them like the Islamist militants to show how much you hate their culture ?
And anyway what kind of cultural imposition are Indians subjecting on Americans ? Are Indians living in USA forcing Americans to abort their babies ? How is this local issue of India an issue of forced multi-culturalism on USA ? Does it make you feel better to insult every non-white culture of this planet as being inferior to your culture willingly knowing that 70% of this planet is non-white ?
You talk about abortion and I too strongly oppose it, but do you know that when black babies are put up for adoption they are not adopted even by Americans ? Infact, Germans adopt more black American babies than white Americans themselves.
So, should I stereotype white American culture as nothing but beer guzzling, “negro” hating, white trash hillbilly types who loudly proclaim they are pro-life but dont want to adopt “niggerbabies” due to their racist mentality that even foreigners are willing to ?
I agree with the basic premise of multi-culturalism - that all civilized cultures need to be respected and people shouldnt be harassed based on their culture - but not its forced implementation. Hating someone just because they dont follow your way of life is not a good way to fight forced multi-culturalism. If they are following some cannibalistic cult or some self-destructive religion, they will eventually die down due to their own policies. Just like the OSHO movement. Only decent philosophies can co-exist with one another and ultimately derive followers from foreign cultures as well. Hating other civilized cultures is meaningless and only prohibits assimilation of well meaning minorities.
And finally, there are bad apples everywhere, but you cannot judge all Indians based on these people alone. Judging Indian culture by the issue of female foeticide is like judging American culture by your diseased filth of KKK and white supremacy.
Hey Planed Parenthood, There’s a gold mine in India just waiting for you to open your murder for money sewer.
It’s also compounded in Muslim societies where men with money take multiple wives leaving poor men frustrated and cut off and, therefore, ripe for jihad since that’s the path to martyrdom and its promises of multiple virgins in paradise.
You need to get back on your meds.....
I don’t belong to the KKK, nor do I wish the death of anyone other than those who have defined themselves as my mortal enemy....
If other folks love their culture too much to adopt to our way of life and laws when they come to America — they should stay home.
I am among that group of American families, whose ancestors and current families have sacrificed much to make America the country it has become - and among those families with relatives still buried in foreign soil — killed to free those people. Many of them use that freedom to criticize us or work against us... That is becoming more than tiresome.
You try to make it a white vs non-white issue.
It is not that at all.
I served with more that the appropriate number of black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed heritage Marines during my career — it is not a racial or ethnic issue — it is an AMERICAN issue of anger at Johnny come lately Third Worlders coming to America to partake of the opportunities yielded from the labor of others, while contributing little other than their bitching or criticism..
Some of us are more that disturbed by the level of accommodation asked of us to show the proper respect for “religious cults” or “cultures” that many of us view as barbaric, uncivilized and inappropriate to practice in America.. A person’s freedom to practice their religion - extends to and stops on the legal side of OUR laws - and does not interfere with my rights, freedom or pursuit of happiness.
If anyone can’t deal with that reality — then frankly I don’t give a damn...
They can kiss my hairy white ass....
Your criticism of White Americans for failure to adopt all the illegitimate black babies is really an amateurish and uninformed grasp of reality... Most especially since >70% of all black children are illegitimate. A more practical approach would be for more self control on the part of the fornicators..
White Americans HAVE “adopted” by virtue of our tax paid welfare programs - of which there are dozens -— all the illegitimate and legitimate black and white children living in circumstance we consider “poverty”...
In many States in the past — Blacks have opposed white families adopting black children out of fear the black children would lose their “cultural roots”.....
Somehow - that doesn’t sound like a bad idea in many cases.
BTTT
Pretty ugly.
Femininazis never speak up for real women.
Rotflmao!
That would be Dr. Kali-goddess of destruction!
That’s what I call the doctor who wanted to yank my gallbladder, and probably my plumbing. Man, that woman was evil!
What you do for your country and society is no doubt great but irrelevant to the topic. If you wish to concentrate on the handful of negative examples that are present in every society then US itself has plenty in store, and thats despite whatever you do. You may not belong to KKK (nobody is saying you do), but reality is it still exist.
Go a few posts above and take a look at the bar graph that shows number number of countries thats above India in terms of the number of abortion. Look at where the US stands. With 4 out of every 1000 aborted out of a population of 400,000,000 you have 1,600,000 babies aborted and in comparison its 600,000 in India out of a population of a billion.
Regardless of what you try do the reality is that there are still plenty of negatives examples present within US itself if all you ever want to do is concentrate on the negative aspect of a culture or country.
Indians also bring along with them to US as part of their culture, strong family values, emphasis on hard work and education, strong moral ethics regarding sex, drug abuse etc something that lot of Americans themselves lack.
If you want to pick on a few bad apples there are lots to choose from among American culture itself.
FR *bookmark*
You need to learn how to follow a thread.
I was responding to a poster who claimed my earlier post brought up abortion (it didn't) - and then led to an insane discussion on the failure of whites to adopt black children....which also wasn't addressed by my earlier post.
If you will point out where I BROUGHT UP the issue of ABORTION, I might be interested in the statistics...
My 2nd post was simply responding the the wildly disassociated ranting of “Design Engineer” who seemed exorcised by the plight of illegitimate black babies in America....
As an aside - the chart you reference purports to show ABORTIONS..
By definition, abortions destroy children PRIOR to birth..
Therefore, the chart couldn’t account for the children murdered after birth by parents too poor to afford the test necessary to determine sex prior to birth......
Your focus on the problems with “American Culture”, perhaps overlooks the major negative influence from the criminal elements present within the vast influx of illegal immigrants who are neither American or reflective of American culture.
““Design Engineer” who seemed exorcised by the plight of illegitimate black babies in America...”
One would think their plight is something unthinkable in a country like the US but its not. It maybe better to be more concerned about the mess on ones own turf then be paranoid of “diversity” and “multiculturism”. That applies to any country or society.
“As an aside - the chart you reference purports to show ABORTIONS..
By definition, abortions destroy children PRIOR to birth..
Therefore, the chart couldn’t account for the children murdered after birth by parents too poor to afford the test necessary to determine sex prior to birth......”
While abortion in India is legal (sex determination is not), children murdered after birth is considered “murder” not abortion, and is illegal and is severely punishable by law. And while I believe that number is even smaller, it is however a different topic. The stats for US also does not display child murder either. Child abuse my parents are not entirely unheard of in the US. India however has a large number of children abandoned who mostly turn up on the streets and also a large number die as a result of neglect and malnutrition. Its happens mostly out of poverty not because of culture (the argument you are trying to put forth).
“Your focus on the problems with “American Culture”, perhaps overlooks the major negative influence from the criminal elements present within the vast influx of illegal immigrants who are neither American or reflective of American culture.”
While a large number of criminal elements do come from influx of illegals its hardly unique or restricted among that particular group. A large number of them are American born citizens.
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