World News Update - Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Psalm 127:3	"Lo, children are an heritage of ETRNAL: and the fruit of the womb is His reward."
Exodus 20:13	"Thou shalt not kill."

India is missing about 10 million daughters since the widespread use of ultrasound, estimates a new study. Over the last 20 years, about 10 million female fetuses may have been selectively aborted following ultrasound results in India, suggest Prabhat Jha at the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues.

Their study of 1.1 million households across India reveals that in 1997, far fewer girls were born to couples if their preceding child or children were also female. There was about a 30% gap in second females following the birth of any earlier females, Jha told New Scientist.

When the firstborn child was a daughter, the sex ratio for second children among the 134,000 births in 1997 was just 759 girls for every 1000 boys. For a third child, just 719 girls were born per 1000 boys, if both the older children were girls. However, if the eldest children were boys, the sex ratios for the second and third child were about 50-50.

Based on conservative assumptions the gap in births equates to about 0.5 million missing female births a year, says the team. Assuming the practice has been common in the two decades since ultrasound became widely available, this adds up to 10 million missing girls. Female infanticide of the past is refined and honed to a fine skill in this modern guise, says Shiresh Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, India, in a commentary accompanying the study in The Lancet.

Removing doubt

Sheth notes that in India's patriarchal society, daughters are regarded as a liability, as she will belong to the family of her future husband. Jha believes his study is the most comprehensive survey of India to date. Previous work on the sex ratio has been more anecdotal and focused on certain regions, he says. The new study shows the disparity is across all parts of India, although it is worse in certain states, for example, in Rajasthan, Punjab and Bihar.

What's also new is a more robust finding that the women at greatest risk [of selective abortion] already had one or two earlier female children, he notes. It helps remove some of the doubt that there may have been underlying factors [explaining the deficit], for example, hormonal factors.

A surprising finding was that the disparity was about twice as large in educated mothers, those with at least an Indian grade 10 education, than in illiterate women. Most things in health are worse among the poor, he notes.

Paid sex

Jha warns that the preference for boys is likely to have profound long-term consequences. In China, the cultural preference for boys and restrictions on family size are already having effects. Some reports suggest there are 40 million bachelors unable to find brides.

But there could be other serious consequences, Jha speculates, such as an impact on the spread of HIV. If there are fewer females to marry and form stable sexual partnerships then males may resort to the use of paid sex, he suggests.

Selective abortion on the basis of sex has been illegal in India since 1994. But there must be diligence in enforcing existing laws, which is not commonly done, says Jha.

The study uses data taken from a nationwide project funded by the Indian government called the Million Death Study, which is the world's largest prospective study on mortality, covering 14 million people.

========================

Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal
Power To Torture Children

Mathaba Net, January 9-
John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody including by crushing that child's testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel. What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat. It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the 'war on terror' than John Yoo." This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo's theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

For a look at the full content of reports posted, just contact