“It’s a girl!” Usually, this phrase is heard as a declaration of joy—but in some parts of the world, it can be a literal death sentence for the unborn.
Gendercide—the practice of aborting or killing female babies in favor of boys—has plagued China and India for some time, but the practice is not confined to those regions. It’s past time to expose the truth about the millions of missing females and demand that international leaders stand up for the human rights of women everywhere.
A new documentary by Shadowline productions, It’s a Girl, tackles gendercide head–on, featuring interviews with families who’ve been forced to give their daughters up for dead.
China’s one-child policy and India’s family expectation for male children has steered these nations into a cultural numbness toward the horrific practice.
The documentary delivers the cold facts: “Today, India and China eliminate more girls than the number of girls born in the United States each year,” says a man in the trailer.
The United Nations estimates at least 200 million girlsare “missing” from the world today because of gendercide.
Despite the numbers, little is being done to end it. A few brave individuals, like China’s Chen Guancheng, have risked their lives to speak out for the “missing” and the women and men forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations. Guangcheng’s outspoken opposition to his country’s one-child policy and many instances of forced abortion landed him in prison for four years until he narrowly escaped earlier this year and was allowed to come to New York.
Chinese Activist Rebiya Kadeer has also spent years in prison for speaking out. In an interview with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Kadeer spoke of some of the cruelty she witnessed against women:
“…they killed the babies in the uterus when they are already full term in the pregnancy, gathered up the mothers and operated on them and removed the babies forcibly, killed the babies…then left the mothers with female reproductive organs diseases.”
“Feminists told us abortion would empower women.” writes Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall. “Instead, in some places around the globe, abortion disproportionately is used against women. A tsunami of social problems is swelling as a result.”
It’s a Girl will hopefully shed a little more light on the silent genocide that is happening every day around the world. In the meantime, international leaders have a responsibility to face the problem.
As Marshall commented: “If there is equality between women and men, it’s rooted in our nature and purpose as human beings. Denying that fundamental dignity inherent in all human life destroys the very basis of equality.”