消失的女孩：英国的女婴文化偏见_BEC初级作文

消失的女孩：英国的女婴文化偏见

Other outcomes are not so happy.

In communities of different faiths and ethnicities across Britain, there is evidence that women are seeking abortions both in the United Kingdom and abroad on the sole basis that their unborn child is a girl.

The Independent has been told of at least 12 cases in the Midlands where women have travelled to India to terminate a female foetus. Whether voluntarily or as a result of pressure from spouses and relatives, mothers-to-be are shaping - or being compelled to shape - their families to service the notion that a son is culturally, economically and socially more desirable than a daughter, according campaigners and clinicians within these communities.

From Chinese to Pakistani couples, Muslim to Hindu to Sikh, the practice is deeply rooted, springing from reasons such as the desire for a male to continue the family name, or the wish to avoid the swingeing financial burden of paying a dowry of up to £25,000 per daughter. More ethereal prejudices include the belief that if a son - and not a daughter - administers the last rites to a father, then the patriarch's soul is speeded to heaven.

Community workers told The Independent that there may be dozens of female foetuses a year in Britain which are being terminated because of "son preference".

Jasvinder Sanghera, a leading campaigner on forced marriages and honour violence against women, who founded the charity Karma Nirvana, said: "I think almost any Asian woman you talk to would say she feels a pressure to have a male child. There will be many, many Asian women out there who are pregnant and who are thinking, 'please, please let it be a boy'.