Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, criticised the practise of aborting female babies in utero.  Families who hope for a boy child will often do this once ultrasounds reveal the sex of the child.  The Lancet estimated that, over the past twenty years, Indians have aborted ten million girl babies for reasons of sex alone (here).  The good news:

“No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilized world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women,” Mr. Singh said, giving an inaugural speech at a national conference dedicating to “saving the girl child,” which brought together politicians, doctors and advocates.

Describing the abortion of female fetuses as “inhuman, uncivilized and reprehensible,” he said the government should crack down on the large numbers of doctors who illegally disclosed the sex of the fetus to the parents, and then arranged abortions of unwanted girls.

The bad news: India permits abortion until twelve weeks if the practioner believes that there is a grave risk to the mother’s physical or mental health, or if the foetus is physically or mentally disabled.  Furthermore, women whose birth control failed are presumed to be so mentally harmed by a pregnancy so as to justify abortion.  (Here.) India’s abortion laws expressly permit discrimination against the physically and mentally disabled - discrimination that would be a human rights violation of the highest order if it occurred outside the womb.  The “mental health” exception is quite broad: we’ve seen in the United States that it permits abortion on  demand.  Is it any surprise, then, that a woman who would be scarred and dishonoured by bringing a female baby into the world would seek - and receive - an abortion under India’s laws?

India’s PM has stated that it is a human rights violation to murder unborn children because of sex.  Would we get to the point where it would be equally reprehnensible to murder boy children, disabled children, or those so unfortunate as to be conceived to women who do not want them, as it is becoming to murder children on account of being female.  The right to life is universal: it does not evaporate when the reasons for abortion are socially acceptable and politically correct.