Indian immigrant women abort female foetus: study

Under family pressure to bear a male child, Indian immigrant women in the US are opting for sex-selective abortion which unlike India is legal in this country, a recent study has revealed.
Researchers at the University of California interviewed immigrant Indian women in California, New Jersey and New York who opted for foetal sex-selection between September 2004 and December 2009.
The qualitative study found that 40 per cent of the women terminated prior pregnancies when they found the foetus was female. Of the women who discovered they were pregnant with a girl during the interview period, 89 per cent underwent an abortion.
The women interviewed belonged to various religious and educational backgrounds with some even having advanced degrees and approximately half of them holding jobs.
Further, women who carried a female foetus to term said they were subject to varying degrees of verbal and physical abuse, the study showed. "While higher education is often thought to translate into enhanced female empowerment, our data suggests a distinction between financial and educational empowerment and empowerment within marital relationships," said Robert Nachtigall, senior author and clinical professor in the UCSF Department of Reproductive Sciences.