MADRAS, India -- Recently a mother strangled her newborn baby in a well-known hospital in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh. The infant was a girl.
This happened even as India's police were trying to implement a ban on prenatal gender tests, which some parents use to learn the sex of their unborn baby -- and then abort it if it turns out to be a female. Then there are the parents who choose to kill their daughters soon after they are born.
The bodies of unwanted female babies have begun to be discovered with alarming regularity in many parts of India. Despite a concerted campaign by the government, media and film industry against this horrendous practice -- which parents resort to in order to avoid paying expensive dowries -- infanticide continues to stain Indian society.