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Day 5
Published in Bertha Alvarez Manninen, Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion, 2022
I mean, this is a big problem right? You’re asking me how to rectify centuries of sexist attitudes against women. There is no overnight solution. One thing that can be done is that the societies in question can have better social policies to support parents in their old age instead of relying so much on their children, their sons in particular. This may reduce the tendency towards son-preference. We have also seen that targeting sexist attitudes towards women is a promising way for stopping abortion due to sex-selection. For example, in southern India, where women are held in higher regard, the birth ratios between males and females is more equitable; abortions aren’t being used for sex-selection as much.15 So the solution is to tackle discrimination against women on a societal level, rather than just attempt to prohibit one particular kind of abortion.
Abortion In Context
Published in Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz, Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2019
Sex-selection abortion has generated a good deal of ethical debate, including among feminists. For some feminists, a pregnant woman’s “right to choose” to terminate a pregnancy is paramount, irrespective of the reason for her choice. For others, sex-selection abortion is morally repugnant. Instead of joining the debate on these terms, more fine-grained accounts of so-called son preference offer other ways to frame the issues. Eklund and Purewal (2017), for example, pointed out that son preference is not solely based on a primordial tradition of male supremacy. Social, cultural, and economic arrangements at least partly drive the desire for sons rather than daughters. In India, Pakistan, and Nepal, for example, these arrangements include discriminatory practices such as exorbitant dowry demands and gender-biased inheritance laws. Were these practices to be abolished, the selective abortion of females might diminish.
Women and health care in a multicultural society
Published in Karen Holland, Cultural Awareness in Nursing and Health Care, 2017
Trevelyan (1994) reported that in societies where ‘there is a strong son preference’ the following trends are likely: Girls get a smaller percentage of their food needs satisfied than boys do, and boys tend to get the more nutritious food. In one region of India, for example, girls are more than four times as likely to be malnourished as boys.Boys are breastfed longer. When the baby is a girl, the mother may interrupt breastfeeding to become pregnant and try for a boy.Boys are more often taken for medical care when they are sick and more money is spent on doctors’ fees and medicine for them. According to UNICEF, for example, in one paediatric unit of a hospital in the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan in 1989, out of a total of 1233 patients, only 424 were girls.(Trevelyan, 1994, p. 49)
Anticipatory Governance of Noninvasive Prenatal Testing for “Non-Medical” Traits: Lessons from Regulation of Medically Assisted Reproduction
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Hui Zhang, Jing Wang, Yan Qin, Chuanfeng Zhang, Bingwei Wang, Yuming Wang
Sex selection for non-medical purposes is one of the most contentious and heavily regulated applications of PGT. In many areas of the world, sex selection is a common phenomenon, which may be motivated by a son preference and possibly also for family balancing (Bowman-Smart et al. 2020). For example, in China and India, sex-selective termination of pregnancy (TOP), often driven by son preference, distorts the natural sex ratio and has several negative social effects. Thus, regulations place a blanket prohibition on prenatal sex determination in these countries (Ginoza and Isasi 2020). However, NIPT may facilitate an increase in sex-selective TOP, owing to its ease, safety, accuracy, and availability early in gestation. Widespread sex selection could not only lead to harm at the social level (increase the disturbance of the sex ratio in countries with cultural son preference) but also lead to ethical concerns at the individual level (sex selection for family balancing) (Bowman-Smart et al. 2020). We believe that the regulatory lessons of the disclosure of fetal sex information to pregnant women should be learned with the use of NIPT for sex-determination.
What do Sunni Muslims think about religiously forbidden reproductive options?
Published in Human Fertility, 2022
Ya'arit Bokek-Cohen, Mahdi Tarabeih
Among the salient characteristics of family culture among Muslims is the preference for a male child (Guilmoto, 2012; Lai-wan et al., 2006; Van Balen & Inhorn, 2003). Son preference may be explained by cultural disposition as well as by practical considerations, and these range from the necessity or advantage of male offspring for agricultural or physical work, protection during war, care of elderly parents, passing down land or other property, continuing the family name or lineage to avoiding the need to provide a dowry (Jesudason & Baruch, 2012). Sex selective practices may be used by couples to achieve a male foetus pregnancy in cultures characterized by son preference (Bokek-Cohen et al., 2021). These practices range from what is considered ‘natural’ techniques (i.e., without medical intervention), and include regulating the diet or timing sexual intercourse and the female orgasm, to extreme measures such as female foeticide and infanticide.
“Our mothers do not tell us”: a qualitative study of adolescent girls’ perspectives on sexual and reproductive health in rural Nepal
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 2022
Aparna Tiwari, Wan-Ju Wu, David Citrin, Aasha Bhatta, Bhawana Bogati, Scott Halliday, Alisa Goldberg, Sonu Khadka, Rekha Khatri, Yashoda Kshetri, Hari Jung Rayamazi, Sabitri Sapkota, Sita Saud, Aradhana Thapa, Rachel Vreeman, Sheela Maru
Participants described traditional gender roles and social norms that continue to foster son preference, devalue girls, and promote gendered expectations in education and social behaviour. Our study shows girls have unequal educational opportunities and are expected to be quiet and obedient in public. Girls and boys also abide by different sexual mores. Our data are consistent with another study on adolescents in a peri-urban area of Nepal that found adolescent girls were more likely to be given the “bad behaviour” label when engaging in the same behaviours as their male counterparts.8 Girls are afraid to access reproductive health services because it may be assumed they are engaging in premarital sex, which is highly stigmatised. Participants in our study spoke of how rumours or “backbiting” can ruin one’s reputation. Therefore, unmarried adolescent girls in this context are even less likely to access SRH services, and vulnerable to poor outcomes.