Female infanticide has been prevalent since the days of ignorance in pre-Islamic Arabia as women have, unfortunately, always been considered as unwanted ‘beasts of burden’. It is still being practiced in this ‘civilized’ age in a subtle and legal form.

Legally permitted means to curb India’s population are being ‘perverted’ to prevent the birth of girls. Most of Bombay’s 260 antenatal screening clinics have helped mothers-to-be determine the gender of their baby, so that females can be aborted. Between 1978 and 1983, 78,000 females fetuses were aborted..

Condemning the practice of “gender abortions,” Prof Pandya further adds: “Most Indian couples yearn for sons to help on the farm, to support them in old age and perform their last rites.” This intense dislike for girls does not pertain to India alone, but is a concept very much favored in Pakistan as well.

A woman is the “mother of Man” and deserves maximum respect and reverence. It is extremely disheartening; therefore, that she is considered an object worth disposing off and a girl’s birth is regarded as a moment of major ‘catastrophe’ and ‘calamity’ in our chauvinistic ‘male-oriented’ society. Worst still is the fact that laws are being promulgated to snatch away whatever negligible rights given to women?

In the delivery room of a maternity clinic, when the wife endures excruciating labour pains, her husband anxiously paces the floor of the waiting room, smoking cigarette after cigarette in a state of anxiety, praying and hoping that the nurse would come out and joyfully announce: “ Congratulations, it’s a boy!”

If his prayer is granted by the benevolent, merciful Almighty, the husband is immediately thrilled and is all smiles. However, the panorama changes on the birth of a girl.

When will we realize that the daughter is much more loving and faithful to her parents, specially the father? Rightly has Thomas Fuller said: “My son is my son, still he gets himself a wife. But my daughter is my daughter all the days of her life.” As a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and eventually a grandmother, a girl symbolizes and encompasses the magnificent spectrum of human life and existence. Islam has placed a woman on the highest pedestal of glory and greatness, by emphasizing the sublime injunction: “Heaven lies at the feet of mothers.”

An ‘educated’ and ‘enlightened’ man once remarked to this writer: “It’s no use spending too much money on a daughter’s education, because we will not get anything in return!” In our society, the husband ‘conveniently’ gets an excuse to divorce his wife if she does not bear him a son. Biologically speaking, the sex of a child is determined by the male and not the female. In a case, a woman who already had two daughters turned hysterical in the labour room of a maternity clinic, repeatedly shouting: “If it’s not a son, I don’t want it. I will commit suicide!”

Such unethical, cruel and callous bias against females has colossal psychological repercussions later on in society. Not only does the girl suffer, but in the process the entire family does, too. Psychologically, the girl always feels unwanted and her fears are mostly justified as primarily, in our rural society, the boy is almost always given priority in matters of food, clothing, education and general welfare.

Heartless manifestations of anti-female prejudices by the murdering of female infants are no more practiced. Yet, it is only the birth of a male child that is heralded with festivities and customary celebrations. The birth of a girl is seldom viewed with a joy fit for celebrations. It is customary and very common for families who have no male issue, to pray specially at the mazars of pirs for the birth of a son.

In Pakistan, the rate of female infant mortality has been higher through the years, possibly due to less care being accorded to female infants, as compared to their male counterparts. In the absence of state provisions for care and maintenance of the old, the son is, in a sense of the word, ‘old-age insurance”. However, normally, the daughter does expend a great deal of love, affection and care to her parents, specially when they are old..

In short, a woman is the Almighty’s most precious gift, the harbinger of a better, more peaceful and compassionate world.