WHERE HAVE ALL THE LITTLE GIRLS GONE

Ancient prejudices against females persist.As a result,the population balance in many Asian countries is showing an alarming swing towards male.

Mother of two girls Toddlers,27-year-old Mira ekes out a living as a maid in the homes of well-to-do Mumbayites. Once when her husband,a factory worker,was drunk,he threatened to throw her out of their home if she bore another daughter.So when he become pregnant again,Mira was panic-stricken.What if the child growing inside her was yet another female?She decided to find out.

Mira scraped some money together and went to a hospital to take the gender test.The results showed that the foetus was female.She told her husband that the doctors had recommended an abortion because she was too weak to carry a third child to full term.Her husband was disappointed initially but finally agreed to take her for an abortion.

In Seoul,South Korea,a women who prefers to be known only as "Nayoung's mother"tells a similar tale.A college graduate with two young daughters,she too was under intense family pressure to bear a son.Pregnant again,she decided to find out sex of her foetus.An ultrasound examination indicated another daughter was on the way.Although she was in her sixth month,an advanced stage of pregnancy when termination is dangerous,the disappointed woman went ahead with an abortion.

Craving for boys:

Ordinarily,the first lusty cry of her new born baby is a joyous moment for a mother.But in many parts of Asia,maternal feelings are often directly related to the sex of the infant.Centuries-old prejudices against female children persist as tenaciously in the Confucian societies of China and South Korea as in several communities in India,Pakistan and Malaysia.

The bias continues despite brisk economic development,growing technological sophistication and rising standards of living.In countless hospital across Asia,anxious women like Mira and "Nayoung's mother" request various medical tests to discover the sex of the child in their womb.For many,if it proves to be female,the next step will be an abortion.

In the early 1970 s,enterprising doctors in Punjab discovered the commercial possibilities in this craving for boys.An amniocentesis examination,a pre-natal test usually administered to detect foetal abnormalities,had a lucrative by product:it could be reveal the sex of an unborn baby with 97% accuracy.Soon hundreds of private clinics offering gender-testing sprang up,predominantly in the northern states.(IT IS COMPLETELY BANNED TODAY AND LEGALLY PUNISHABLE)

To administer the test,doctors extract about 20cc of amniotic fluid from the foetal sac of a woman,four months pregnant,using a fine,hollow needle inserted through the abdomen.Foetal cells are separated from the fluid and allowed to multiply in a tissue culture for about three weeks for eventual chromosomal analysis.By then,the women is usually 20 weeks into her pregnancy.

In recent years,new pre-natal tests have been gaining popularity.Chorion villus biopsy yields a result in several days and can be done in early pregnancy.The outermost embryonic membrane or chorion develops finger-like projections or villi.Between the seventh and the ninth weeks of pregnancy,samples of chorion villi are obtained through the vagina and cervix and can be examined immediately for genetic defects and gender.

Another relatively safe and alternative is ultra sonography,which uses inaudible sound-waves to project a visual image of the foetus on a screen.This method is commonly employed to assess foetal age or detect defects.Provided the plane of scan is correct,it can also reveal sex if external male genitalia have begun forming.Sex detection by this method ,therefore,is possible only in advanced pregnancy.

Heinous Crime:

In China,which together with India accounts for almost two-fifths of the world's population,abortion is not only legal but unofficially condoned as an effective instrument of birth control.But here,where since 1979 a rigorous one-child policy has been in force,the desire for male offspring is especially strong.As a consequence,the government strictly forbids pre-natal sex testing and female infanticide is considered a heinous crime.Yet many question the system's efficiency in catching baby-killers.Critics say local family planning officials are often given bonuses for maintaining "birth quotas",and they keep quiet about infanticide.

Some baby girls are abandoned in caves or trussed  up in sacks and thrown into a river.Others are dumped in garbage bins,forced to swallow lethal insecticide or packed in cardboard boxes and left to die in fields.

According to People's Daily newspaper,more than 40 baby girl born to one production team alone were drowned between 1980 and 1981 in nothern Anthui Province.In two countries of southern Guangdong Province,revealed the Nangfang Daily,some 200 female infants were killed in 1982.In some instances a bucket of water was placed near the mother's bed,said the report.If the new born was a girl,she was immediately drowned.

The Chinese government doesn't publish statistics on female infanticide.But one of the factor that  prompted the US govt. in 1985 to begin holding back millions of dollars in aid to the UN Fund for Population Activities was the suspicion that China's stringent population policy was responsible for widespread infanticide.For its part,China has denied that the practice is rampant,saying that the United States has made "a mountain out of a molehill."

Unheard Of:

Statistic compiled by Korean Economic Planning Board in 1985 revealed that among children under the age of four,boys outnumbered girls by 108.1 to 100.The prevalence of gender testing and the increasing abortions of female foetuses,prompted the Korean Medical Association to impose in February 1986 a self-regulatory ban on the practice of sex determination.None the less,it is commonly understood in Korea that clandestine tests and abortions are available-at the right price.

Old prejudices linger on even in affluent Hong Kong.According to a leading Hong Kong Gynaecologist,many local parents would not settle for an all-girl family,though they would like at least one daughter.Pre-natal sex-testing is legal,but medical profession is bound by strong ethical standards that restrict passing on gender information to parents.Although for every 4.5 births in Hong Kong in 1986 one legal abortion and many illegal ones were performed,cases of women aborting foetuses because they are female are practically unheard of.

Education and high living standards seem to have blunted the discrimination against girls in Japan and Singapore.Amniocentesis was introduced in Japan in the late 1960s but has been little abused,and female foeticide is almost unheard of.

Can laws alter social attitudes?

South Korea is trying a softer approach to the problem.In a popular TV commercial,a middle class couple announce that they will have only one child.The camera then pans to a little girl besides them,blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.However,more needs to be done if Koreans are to give up their preferences for boys.Women,s groups have long lobbied for changes to the country's heavily Confucian Family Law,which they say reinforces prejudices against women.

Changing cultural patterns in not easy.But there are those who foresee a day when,as a result of social education and strong laws,Asia's multicultural societies will be truly balanced,sexually equal communities where females are no longer the unwanted sex.The alternative is grim.