USC study finds big drop in number of children living in L.A. County

Los Angeles County is “ground zero” for the state’s diminishing child population, a statistic that could point to serious problems as the region tries to meet future demand for workers, according to a report released Tuesday.

The number of children between the ages of 5 and 9 in the county decreased by 21% from 2000 to 2010, dropping from 802,047 to 633,690. The average decrease for California was 8.1%, according to the report “Aging in California and Los Angeles County” by USC.

“In the long run … this is really a bad problem because these kids are going to grow up and the ones who are missing [from L.A. County] are likely not going to work here,” said Dowell Myers, one of the report’s authors. “That workforce is going to be in very short supply.

Myers said California’s shrinking child population, reflected in new census figures, is on the “extreme end” of an overall aging U.S. population because of the maturing of the baby boomer generation. One result has been declining student enrollment and the closure of schools.

“There’s just fewer potential parents and that’s part of what’s driving it,” Myers said. “The implications are that we really need to think about building a more supportive environment for families and kids. Our children are a precious and diminishing resource, and they deserve more support.”

Researchers attributed much of the disproportionate local loss to difficult living conditions for families facing high housing costs and high unemployment. The report’s authors also noted findings released by the Brookings Institution in April that showed the greater Los Angeles area was bucking a national trend with a declining Latino child population.

Another finding was that more than half of the state’s population is over age 35, about two years older than the median age of 33.3 in 2000. Additionally, researchers said the number of minors in L.A. County dropped 10% from 2000 to 2010, more than any other area in the state.

A second USC report, “The Changing Household and Family,” released Tuesday said new demographic trends are “changing the meaning of what is a conventional household.”

There were 32% more households with unmarried couples throughout the state in 2010 than a decade earlier. There also was a 17% increase in the number of California homes that have children with single fathers, a surprising statistic because it was a larger increase than the number of homes headed by single mothers.

In L.A. County, there also was a 14% decrease in the number of households with married couples and children from 2000 to 2010, the data showed.

“We’re heading into uncharted territory,” Myers said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0525-usc-report-20110525,0,367814.story

As Wealth and Literacy Rise in India, Report Says, So Do Sex-Selective Abortions

NEW DELHI — India’s increasing wealth and improving literacy are apparently contributing to a national crisis of “missing girls,” with the number of sex-selective abortions up sharply among more affluent, educated families during the past two decades, according to a new study.

The study found the problem of sex-selective abortions of girls has spread steadily across India after once being confined largely to a handful of conservative northern states. Researchers also found that women from higher-income, better-educated families were far more likely than poorer women to abort a girl, especially during a second pregnancy if the firstborn was a girl.

“This has deep implications,” Shailaja Chandra, one of the study’s authors and the former director of the National Population Stabilization Fund, said Tuesday during a panel discussion after the release of the findings. “The scale is very large and requires intervention beyond what has been done so far.”

The study, being published in the British medical journal The Lancet, is the latest evidence of India’s worsening imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls. The 2011 Indian census found 914 girls for every 1,000 boys among children 6 six or younger, the lowest ratio of girls since the country gained independence in 1947. The new study estimated that 4 million to 12 million selective abortions of girls have occurred in India in the past three decades.

The government has enacted legislation intended to prevent parents from using ultrasound screenings or other technologies to decide whether to abort a girl. Yet despite such laws, the situation has not improved. Few medical practitioners who violated the law have been prosecuted, while regulation of private health care providers is very limited.

India is similar to many Asian countries in that many families prefer boys. In Hindu funeral rituals, only males, preferably a son of the deceased, may perform last rites; sons also usually inherit property (while daughters are married into other families) and carry on the family name. A cultural preference for sons is also common among many Indian Muslims.

Dr. Prabhat Jha, a lead author of the study, noted that the use of sex-selective abortions expanded throughout the country as the use of ultrasound equipment became more widespread. Typically, women from wealthier, better-educated families are more likely to undergo an ultrasound, Mr. Jha said, and researchers found that these families are far more likely to abort a girl if the firstborn is a daughter.

“This is really a phenomenon of the educated and the wealthy that we are seeing in India,” said Mr. Jha, director of the Center for Global Health Research at the University of Toronto.

Census data has already confirmed that the problem has accelerated since 2001. The 2011 census found about 7.1 million fewer girls than boys under the age of 6, compared with a gap of roughly 6 million girls a decade earlier.

The Lancet study was conducted by researchers from several partner institutions, with the United States National Institutes of Health providing some of the financing. About 250,000 births from 1990 to 2005 were examined, using data from surveys conducted by India’s National Family Health Survey, as well as census data from 1991 to 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/world/asia/25india.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper

Chinese babies reportedly trafficked into adoption

Authorities in China are investigating reports that about 20 babies born in violation of population-control policies were abducted and then trafficked into adoption by officials.

The investigation comes after Caixin magazine reported this week that family planning officials in central China’s Hunan province had abducted children and sold them internationally – some to people in the United States and the Netherlands.

Chinese officials do not always enforce the “one child” policy with much vigour and the worst that violators normally expect is a fine.

The case, which is not the first to accuse Chinese family planning officials of abusing population control policies for profit, sheds further light on the uneven implementation of child-population-control policy.

One family claimed they had not broken the law as the child was their first, but family planning “enforcers” nonetheless took the baby away.

“They mistook my daughter for being illegal when my wife and I were working in Shenzhen,” migrant worker Yang Libing told the magazine.

Mr Yang said he had tracked down his daughter, now seven years old and living in the United States.

Family planning officials in Longhui county allegedly received $142 for each child handed over to welfare agencies, which in turn received up to $2,760 for each child put up for adoption overseas, it said.

The abductions peaked in the middle of the last decade but had been occurring for 10 years, the magazine said.

Trafficking of women and children remains a serious problem in China, with many sociologists blaming the one child policy for fuelling the crime.

Under the policy, aimed at controlling China’s world-leading population of more than 1.3 billion, people who live in urban areas are generally allowed one child, while rural families can have two if the first is a girl.

This has put a premium on baby boys, while baby girls are often sold off, abandoned or put up for adoption.

Official penalties for violating the policy vary based on location, but usually include a fine. Rights groups however allege that much more draconian measures are often taken.

In a report released in December, the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) cited widespread abuse including forced abortions, sterilisations, insertions of intrauterine devices and coerced testing for pregnancy.

Both men and women found to have violated the policy have been beaten, detained, or fined. Others have lost their jobs, or been denied household registration permits for their children, CHRD alleged.

China is battling a severe gender imbalance. A census recently completed in the country found 118.06 males were born in China to every 100 baby girls over the past 10 years.

Up to 80,000 Chinese children have reportedly been adopted by overseas families in recent decades, with most finding homes in the United States.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/11/3213686.htm

Born in the USA: Illinois women act as surrogates for foreign couples

With a flag hanging outside her house, a crate of Girl Scout cookies in her living room and a dog named for Disney sensation Miley Cyrus at her feet, Laurie Thompson is about as American as it gets.

The same cannot be said for the 14-week-old twins in her gently protruding belly.

Conceived with a donor’s eggs, they are the children of a same-sex couple from Spain who turned to Thompson because paid surrogacy is illegal in their country.

“There’s such pride in knowing that I did this for somebody,” Thompson says of her experience as a surrogate, which has also included a pregnancy for a married couple from Serbia.

“This is something that is probably hard for most people to do — with the emotional connection and everything — and I was able to do it.”

She laughs: “And do it again, obviously.”

Thompson, who lives in McHenry, five miles from another woman who recently carried a child for a European couple, represents a new twist in global fertility tourism.

In the last five years, would-be parents from as far as Istanbul and Uruguay have turned to healthy young mothers from Illinois to carry their children.

The babies are born U.S. citizens, surrogacy agency officials say, but that’s not a primary motivation for the parents, who typically come from European and Latin American countries where surrogacy is illegal or unavailable. The parents have exhausted other options and are willing to pay about $50,000 to $100,000 — part of which goes to the surrogate — to have biological children.

No one tracks how many of the estimated 1,400 babies via surrogacy in the U.S. each year are carried for international parents, but one of the larger U.S. agencies, the Center for Surrogate Parenting in Encino, Calif., estimates that about half of its 104 births in 2010 were for international parents.

In Illinois, which has had one of the most surrogacy-friendly laws in the nation, at least two dozen international babies were born to surrogates in 2010, according to a Tribune survey of major agencies. The only other states that explicitly allow contracts for paid surrogacy are Arkansas, California and Massachusetts.

“We’re getting inquires from international parents constantly. Because of the referral process, it’s skyrocketed,” said Zara Griswold, director of Family Source Consultants in Hinsdale. “We recently got an inquiry from somebody in China.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-13/health/ct-news-surrogate-mom-20110413_1_surrogacy-center-for-surrogate-parenting-international-parents

Women pay the price to be mum, study shows

WOMEN not only bear the babies and the brunt of juggling children and child care, they also bear a huge financial burden from raising them, new research shows.

Analysis from Hewison Private Wealth has found the average woman is about $200,000 worse off at retirement if she opts to have a baby.

This is despite starting out by having the same salary and career path as a man or a woman who does not have a break because of children.

The massive financial shortfall is the result of a woman who goes on maternity leave, returns to part-time work for several years and then eventually full time again, Hewison director Chris Morcom says.

During that time, she has missed out on wage increases and career development which permanently sets her earning capacity and career prospects below her colleagues.

In turn, this means her superannuation fund savings are much lower, Morcom says.

Self-managed super fund specialist DBA Lawyers spokesman Bryce Figot says women are also behind in the DIY fund sector.

About 54 per cent of self-managed fund members are men and, of these, they typically earn a much higher income than the 46 per cent of female members.

“Underfunded superannuation is a really big issue for women and it’s a function of several factors, including not getting a fair play,” Figot says.

“It’s basically a function of how much they earn and, on a pure statistical basis, women are still paid less then men.

“It’s also about the number of years they have in the workforce, with many women having to take significant amounts of time off to raise families, instead of dedicating that time to their career.

“But the real kicker for women is that they live longer and actually need more money in retirement than men because it has to last longer.”

Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees chief executive Fiona Reynolds says most women run out of super after little more than a year after finishing work.

“About 57 per cent have nothing left after a year,” Reynolds says.

“It’s time to get creative with policies that recognise most women will take career breaks to have children and care for other family members.

“Without change, women will continue to come up second-best in retirement.”

Research by AIST has found that only two-thirds of retired women have any superannuation and, of those that did, their median balance is just $31,000. The median balance of women currently in the workforce is just $27,200, Reynolds says.

Hewison’s Morcom says women need to contribute 15 per cent of their wages (not just the basic 9 per cent super guarantee) during their working life to make up the typical shortfall.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/money/women-pay-the-price-to-be-mum/story-e6frezc0-1226052290160?from=public_rss

Census shows China population growth slowing

China’s population has increased to 1.34 billion but more people are ageing, a development experts say will likely spur calls for the “one-child” policy to be relaxed.

Census data gathered in 2010 and released on Thursday showed the population in the world’s second biggest economy grew by 5.84 percent from the 1.27 billion in the last census in 2000.

This level was smaller than the 1.4 billion some demographers had projected.

As China is fast urbanising and becoming older, these trends augur big changes in the labour market in coming years, the results showed.

The number of potential workers, especially from the countryside, is shrinking and the elderly dependent population is increasing.

By 2010, half of China’s population, 49.7 per cent, lived in urban areas. In 2000, 36.1 per cent lived in cities and towns, although that census used a different counting method.

By 2010, 261.4 million Chinese were counted as “migrants”, meaning they were residing outside of their home villages, towns or cities. Most of them are farmers from the poor inland who have moved to cities and coastal industrial zones to find work.

‘Historial landmark’

“What’s significant is that China is for the first time crossing a historical landmark from a country that’s dominated by people engaging in agriculture, living in the countryside, to an urbanised society,” said Wang Feng, a demographer who is director of the Brookings Institute Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.

“Such low fertility and population growth means that China will face a future smaller cohort of young labour for labour supply, and also a much more serious ageing process than people anticipated even 10 years ago or two decades ago.”

Those rapid changes have not always been smooth, Ma Jiantang, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told a news conference.

“The data from this census show that our country faces some tensions and challenges regarding population, the economy and social development. First, the ageing trend is accelerating, and second the size of the mobile population is constantly expanding.”

The results could encourage the government to relax family planning restrictions that limit nearly all urban couples to one child, while rural families are usually allowed two, said Du Peng, a professor at the Population and Development Studies Center at Renmin University in Beijing.

“The total population shows the general trend towards slowed population growth and as well an older population, and in the next five years or longer that will be an important basis for population policy,” said Du.

“The ageing of the population appears faster than was expected.”

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, told a meeting of top Communist Party leaders convened to discuss population issues that China will maintain its strict family planning policy.

Demographers advocating changes to the one-child policy took a counterintuitive look at Hu’s speech, suggesting his decision to publicly address family planning now meant there was fresh debate among the leadership about how best to manage it.

The proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.60 per cent, down by 6.29 percentage points from the number in the 2000 census. The number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26 per cent, up 2.93 percentage points.

Slower growth

The figures also showed that China’s population is growing more slowly than in the past. Between 1990 and 2000, the total population increased by 11.7 per cent.

China’s chief statistician, Ma, acclaimed the numbers as a vindication of the government’s firm, sometimes harsh, family planning policies.

“These figures have shown the trend of excessively rapid growth of China’s population has been under effective control,” Ma said.

But one economist said China’s slowed rate of population growth and shrinking pool of migrant labour from the countryside could add to long-term pressures driving up wages and prices.

“What really matters is the one-child policy that has created a cliff-fall (in the population) in the last three decades,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

“That is starting to show in rural labour markets and the entire economy feels the pain as this becomes a major source of inflation,” he said in a telephone interview.

The shift of the population to urban areas has put great pressure on cities like Beijing and Chongqing and will likely to spur continued high levels of infrastructure spending in coming years.

The Chinese government’s strict controls on family size have brought down annual population growth to below 1 percent and the rate is projected to start falling in coming decades.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/04/201142852019929352.html

Most educated U.S. women have most kids

WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) — The fertility rate for mothers in 2009 was 2 children per woman, down 4 percent from 2008, which may be linked to the economy, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

However, the women who had the highest fertility rate are those with a graduate or professional degree and by states — there were 2.6 births per woman in Utah and 1.7 births per woman in Vermont.

In 2008, there were an estimated 85.4 million U.S. mothers and the vast majority lived with their own children, the Census Bureau says.

Ninety-four percent of the 37.8 million mothers living with children younger than age 18 in 2004 lived with their biological children only, 3 percent lived with stepchildren, 2 percent with an adopted child and less than 1 percent with a foster child.

Eighty-two percent of women ages 40-44 had given birth as of 2008, compared to 90 percent of women in this age group had given birth by 1976, the report says.

Hospitals were the most popular place to deliver a baby — of the some 4 million U.S. births, only 42,746 did not give birth in a hospital in 2008 with 28,357 mothers having her baby at home and 12,014 in a freestanding birthing center.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/05/03/Most-educated-US-women-have-most-kids/UPI-73521304448825/#ixzz1LMrfG4fk

Women demonstrate over falling sex ratio in Raj

Jaipur, Apr 27 (PTI) Women activists today took to the streets of Jaipur to highlight concerns over a falling child sex ratio in Rajasthan and demand for a concrete policy to check the alarming situation.

The figures from the 2011 Census have thrown up rattling statistics of child sex ratio in Rajasthan, with 883 girls born per 1000 boys as against 909 in 2001, indicating sex selection was on the rise.

Scores of women activists from different cities of the state and from different organisations held a joint rally here today, and presented a memorandum to the Chief Minister raising certain key issues.

The activists have demanded the drafting of a state policy 2021 to lay out a plan to check the worrying trend with participation from all sections of the administration — from the Chief Minister to district and panchayat level officials.

They also demanded that officials be given the responsibility to check pre natal sex detection and properly implement the PNDT Act.

The activists highlighted that the child sex ratio in the state had fallen by a worrying 71 points over the last 30 years, and the situation was particularly bad in certain districts like Jhunjhunu where it stood at 831 and in Sikar where it was 841.

They also suggested that the Chief Minister call a meeting of all district collectors to discuss the implementation of the PCPNDT Act, and complaints against doctors found guilty of violation be registered at the Rajasthan Medical Council and be sorted out in given time frame.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/women-activists-demonstrate-over-falling-sex-ratio-raj-141900363.html

A woman to enjoy a male ritual in the gender-biased Jatland

CHAPPAR (BHIWANI): A couple of days before her wedding on May 12, Monika Sangwan of Chappar village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district will ride a mare to the village temple. Women of her family will accompany her singing traditional songs. The ritual, called ‘ghurchari’, is an old custom in these parts but only for men. Monika would be the first woman to perform ‘ghurchari’ in the Jatland known for its gender bias against women.

Monika is a postgraduate student in a Hissar college. Breaking with tradition, her mother Kamlesh Sangwan (45), an anganwadi worker, decided to have the ‘ghurchari’ for Monika’s wedding. “Why should I discriminate against my daughter when I would arrange ghurchari for my son when he gets married?” said Kamlesh.

She was inspired when Satyawan Sangwan of her village performed ‘kuan pujan’ (worshipping a well) when his daughter was born. In Haryana, the puja is held to celebrate the birth of a male child. But, Satyawan did it to welcome his daughter’s birth, the first girl child born in his family after 30 years.

Kamlesh, a member of the village youth club, also decided to celebrate Monika’s marriage to Satinder in a unique way. “I am excited,” said Monika, adding that her father Dharambir is also happy about this.

Her elder sister Neelam got married five years back when ‘Save the Girl Campaign’ had not picked up in the village. “It would have been nice, if a ghurchari had been organized for me. But I am happy my sister would get that opportunity,” said Neelam.

Village sarpanch Kartar Singh welcomed the initiative. The population of the village is around 10,000. “More than 100 boys are waiting to get married. We plan to involve these boys in the `Save the Girl Campaign. They will also inform the authorities, if they get to know about any female foeticide case,” he said.

Shyam Sunder, secretary of Bhiwani’s Red Cross Society, is credited with the initiative to perform ‘kuan pujan’ for the girl child here about a year ago. “Marriage is an important event in a person’s life and the girl should feel proud of her gender on this occasion,” he said.

And, his efforts has helped improve the sex ratio in the village. From 821:1,000 in 2010, the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group has climbed to 1,281:1,000 in the first three months of this year, said Sunder.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-27/india/29478299_1_girl-child-gender-bias-male-child

Half of Beijing women eligible for 2nd child give up – survey

More than 50 per cent of the childbearing-age women in Beijing who are eligible for a second child under China’s family planning policy do not want to produce, said the “2010-2011 Beijing Social Development Blue Book” recently released by the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

The “Comparative Study on the Childbearing Will of Urban and Rural Only Child in Beijing” section of the blue book is a survey conducted by the Beijing Population Research Institute in 2006 and 2008 regarding the childbearing will of more than 2,000 only children in Dongcheng District, Haidian District and Changping District of Beijing.

The report pointed out that the childbearing will of females in Beijing is currently going towards the trend of having fewer children, later childbirth, and no clear gender preference. In addition, the only-children themselves dominate the reproductive behaviors, and the impact of policies on childbearing will gradually become minimal.

In addition, the blue book said that the per capita annual income of ordinary working families in Beijing stood at 22,000 yuan, amounting to the per capita monthly income of 1,833 yuan. The annual wage income of nearly 70 percent of ordinary workers is less than 30,000 yuan and the annual wage income of nearly 3 percent of workers is less than 12,000 yuan. Furthermore, only more than 14 percent of workers’ annual wage income exceeds 40,000 yuan.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/98649/7361977.html

Bangladesh to introduce family planning policy

Bangladesh is going to introduce “one couple, one child” population planning policy soon without making it mandatory in a bid to contain the growing population of the country.

The Director General of the Directorate of Family Planning Mohammad Abdul Qayyum told Xinhua in an interview Wednesday “The Chinese policy influenced us in framing our policy though we are not making it mandatory,” He said they will create awareness among people about “one couple, one child” policy.

The directorate drafted the policy to popularize the slogan “Nomore than two children, one is best,” the official said.

The couples having one child would be given preferences in different state facilities like financial grants and other areas.

“We are eager to develop relationship with Chinese population planning authorities for training our men, using modern contraceptive and other related matters,” Qayyum said.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world with more than 1,000 people living in one square kilometer area, and the population growth rate is now at 1.39 percent, the director general said, adding that according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimate, Bangladesh’s population is now at 162.2 million though the Bangladeshi government counts it to be 140 million.

Qayyum said, “The population situation of the country will be grave after 50 years if the current growth rate is not halted.”

He said they want to contain the population growth, otherwise, it would create pressure on basic rights of people like education, health, housing and food.

Qayyum said the government has reduced child mortality rate to 65 now from 150 per thousand live birth.

The director general said the country at present has nearly 25 million fertile couple and 56 percent of whom are adopting various methods of population planning.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6850595.html

Survey: Shanghai couples unwilling to have 2nd child

While China’s family planning policy restricts most people from having a second child, more than half of those eligible to have another child don’t want one. And the reason, according to a recent survey, is purely financial.

“It’s not the family planning policy that makes me hesitate because my wife and I are both eligible (to have a second child). But what we are facing now is huge economic pressure,” 32-year-old Shanghai IT engineer George Zhang, whose wife is expecting their first baby, was quoted by Wednesday’s China Daily as saying.

“My entire income will go toward paying off our housing loan and the child’s food and clothing,” he said. “I can’t afford a second baby, though I envy those families who have twins.”

The survey was conducted by the Shanghai-based Dongfang Daily, following a reminder from the city government last month telling couples that if both spouses are sole children, they are eligible to have a second child.

Among the 829 surveyed, 23 percent were eligible to have another child. Of those, 59 percent said they don’t want a second baby, 18.5 percent said they wanted one and 22 percent expressed hesitation.

Among those disqualified from having a second child, 51 percent said they wouldn’t have another baby even if the policy allowed them to. When asked about the reason, 86 percent said the primary concern was money.

More than 3 million people, or about 22 percent of Shanghai’s population, are aged 60 or above.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6719139.html

Gender-selection abortions spreading in India

Published On Fri Apr 22 2011

Muskan Goel, a 5-year-old girl in Jhajjar, India, a district where there are only 774 young girls for every 1,000 boys, the worst ratio in the country. Local business leaders, politicians and police officials say Jhajjar is a hotbed for female feticide.

Rick Westhead/TORONTO STAR

By Rick Westhead South Asia Bureau

JHAJJAR, INDIA—Muskan Goel is a beautiful 5-year-old girl with an expressive face and saucer eyes who would stand out in any crowd.

But in the north Indian farming service centre Jhajjar, Muskan commands attention simply because she’s a young girl.

She’s one of 16 girls who’ve been admitted to the school over the past year, compared to 43 boys, a symptom of this nation’s failing struggle against gender-selection.

India is a fast-changing country where luxury companies, car makers and cell-phone manufacturers all covet a piece of the growing market. But it’s also a nation with deep-rooted, centuries-old cultural traditions.

Families here have typically pined for a son, to carry on a father’s lineage, contribute to his household’s income and care for his parents as they age. Parents also want a boy because someone with their own last name is required to light their funeral pyre when they are cremated.

For the past four decades, since ultrasound machines were introduced in India, parents desperate for a son to carry on their lineage have had technology on their side, turning a cultural preference into a ruthlessly efficient girl-killing system. If their fetus is female, some mothers opt for an abortion rather than carry to full term.

That’s because even though it’s been illegal for 50 years, many families still pay costly dowries to have their daughters marry. When they do get married, those women leave their home to join their new husband and contribute to his family.

There are estimates that over the past decade alone, more than 10 million unborn females have been aborted across India.

The results of India’s latest once-a-decade census suggest that the gender-selection abortions are spreading beyond the traditional areas of devout Hindus in northern India. It shows there are 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under age 6, a steady decline from 927 girls in 2001 and 962 girls in 1981.

(Boys outnumber girls by a ratio of about 106 to 100 at birth in Canada, according to Statistics Canada).

Nowhere is the disparity greater than in Jhajjar, a district of wheat, mustard and grape seed fields in India’s Haryana state where there are only 774 girls for every 1,000 boys. The district is a centre of female feticide, local business leaders, politicians and police officials say.

But in Jhajjar township, a community of 50,000 that shares the same name as its larger district, opinion remains sharply divided over whether the trend is a cause for concern.

While some local leaders say more education and better policing is needed to stop the practice, others contend there’s nothing to worry about. Abortions, they say, help limit the size of families, which is a positive step towards improving maternal health, while women from other parts of India offset the shortage of marriage-eligible women.

On a recent weekday, Usha Gehlot ushered several visitors through Kidz Shaishav, a school she founded four years ago in Jhajjar for children aged two to seven.

Gehlot said she sees firsthand the effect of selective abortions in her classes. Of the 59 students she has admitted since January 2010, 43, or 75 per cent, are boys. While some families may simply choose not to send their daughters to school, Gehlot suspects something more sinister is responsible for the skewed figure — female feticide.

“It is a big problem,” Gehlot said. “When you have so many more boys, they get more aggressive, and we see that in our class. I think you’ll see more problems in the future with violence and rapes because of frustrated men.”

In Haryana and other states, educators have struggled for years to coax women to stop going to “kudi-maar,” or “daughter-killers.” Some officials have pushed state governments to pay families a bonus for having a daughter, while others pressed for changes to Indian law.

In 1994, India’s parliament passed a law calling for a prison term of up to three years and a fine of $320 for anyone who administers or takes a prenatal sex-determination test.

Not everyone in Jhajjar is worried about the widening gender ratio.

Sitting in a crowded chai shop, amid a row of two-storey grey concrete buildings, city councillor Kishor Saini gestured to a nearby open sewer.

“That is our biggest problem,” he said. “Sewers and drinking water. Many parts of our city don’t have water supplies and the government pipes are leaking.”

Saini says he doesn’t consider feticide a crime, or even a pressing social problem.

“The first thing that comes into peoples’ mind is to have a boy,” he shrugged. “It used to be that parents had three or four or five kids and they didn’t give a damn if they had a girl. But now they want smaller families and they do care.”

While several bachelors complain that already there aren’t enough eligible brides in Jhajjar, Saini says that’s not a worry. Haryana is a wealthy state that attracts migrant workers, and their daughters, from poor states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

“There are women to be married,” Saini said.

After spending less than an hour in town, several visitors this week were told about two health clinics in Jhajjar that purportedly provide ultrasounds and abortions.

A female journalist working with the Star entered the first clinic on Wednesday afternoon and told a doctor in charge that she was pregnant and wanted to find out if she was carrying a girl. The doctor nodded and provided the name and address of Hemlata, a doctor at another clinic.

A few minutes later, the reporter introduced herself to Hemlata. Operating out of an office barely bigger than an office cubicle, Hemlata spent 15 minutes grilling the journalist, at one point demanding her cell phone to see if their conversation was being recorded.

“This is so dangerous,” Hemlata said. “Can I trust you?”

Ultimately, Hemlata said she wouldn’t help and ended their conversation.

Later, Hemlata said in an interview that she doesn’t offer the illegal ultrasounds or abortions to anyone.

“I don’t allow anyone an ultrasound before they are six months pregnant unless they are bleeding,” she said, sitting next to her examination room, which consisted of little more than a bench, a flashlight and a box of disposable plastic gloves.

Hemlata was asked how the gender ratio has become so lopsided in Jhajjar if no one is performing illegal ultrasounds and abortions.

“Maybe it’s because of miscarriages and bad pregnancies,” she said.

Police inspector Ajmer Singh says that while he considers the illegal abortions tantamount to murder, he’s helpless without a complainant.

“Who’s going to complain?” asked Puchalapalli Sandhya, a social activist in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who has worked on women’s rights issues for decades.

“The mother of the unborn won’t, and neither will the ultrasound operator.”

Sandhya said the only solution to India’s female feticide debacle is improved education, which will give a woman the chance to generate a monthly income when she gets married, a development that should bolster her leverage in family decisions.

“We have to keep pushing to ensure that young girls become better educated,” Sandhya said.

“Right now, too many women just feel guilty for being women,” she said. “Having a girl baby is a burden. It’s in the blood here and it’s something that has to change.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/979111–gender-selection-abortions-spreading-in-india

Vladimir Putin promises £33 billion to boost birth rate

Mr Putin insisted that that Russia must be strong to fend off foreign threats and lauded a long list of his own achievements, a show of muscle seen as a signal that the powerful leader intends to reclaim the country’s presidency next year.

He laid out an ambitious program of weapons modernisation in an annual address to parliament that sounded much like a campaign speech, promising to spend the equivalent of £430 billion by 2020. The speech’s broad scope — ranging from long-term economic goals to national security and defence — underlined Mr Putin’s role as the nation’s No. 1 leader, though his successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, technically has far broader powers.

“The nation needs decades of stable and calm development without any sharp movements and ill-conceived experiments” based on liberal policy, the 58-year-old leader said.

On the country’s declining population, he pledged to boost the country’s birth rate by between 25 and 30 per cent by 2015.

“According to preliminary calculations, between 2011 and 2015 some 1.5 trillion roubles will be invested in demography projects,” he said. “First, we expect the average life expectancy to reach 71 years. Second, we expect to increase the birth rate by 25 to 30 per cent in comparison to the 2006 birth rate.”

Under the plan, the government would build more affordable housing for families, promote a healthy lifestyle and stop the country’s brain drain. Previous schemes have seen cash incentives given to parents with two or more children to be spent on housing and education.

His speech to the State Duma included a litany of self-praise and ambitious goals for the future. He claimed credit for quickly taking Russia out of the global financial crisis and promised that it would become one of the world’s top five economies by 2020. Russia is currently ranked as the world’s sixth biggest economy.

Mr Putin said that a key lesson from the financial crisis was that the nation must be “self-reliant independent and strong” to resist outside pressure.

“The weakness of economy and the state, a lack of immunity to outside shocks inevitably become a threat for national sovereignty,” Mr Putin said. “In the modern world, those who are weak will get unambiguous advice from foreign visitors which way to go and what policy course to pursue.”

Mr Putin said that the national economy rose by four per cent last year and said that the growth rate will accelerate this year allowing to fully compensate for losses from the crisis by 2012.

Mr Putin vowed to modernise national industries and develop new technologies to reduce Russia’s dependence on oil, gas and other raw materials, venturing into Mr Medvedev’s favorite turf. He also made pledges to combat corruption similar to those Mr Medvedev has made since taking the country’s helm — though he hasn’t made much progress.

Winning frequent applause from a parliament dominated by his United Russia party, Mr Putin boasted of hikes in pensions and other social payments as well as increases of government spending on education and science. He promised to stem Russia’s population decline by supporting young families and improving health care, and pledged support to industries and agriculture.

Mr Putin put a particular emphasis on boosting defence and laid out ambitious plans to procure new weapons for the military. He said that production of missiles will double starting from 2013 compared to the current level and that a massive navy modernisation program will be launched.

Mr Putin, who was Russia’s president in from 2000 to 2008, groomed his longtime aide and protege, Mr Medvedev, to succeed him. Both men have said they would decide later who would run for president in March 2012, but Mr Putin is widely expected to take the top job back.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8463262/Vladimir-Putin-promises-33-billion-to-boost-birth-rate.html

Haryana doctor held for sex determination test

Chandigarh, April 20 (IANS) A doctor and his assistant in Haryana’s Karnal town were caught red-handed Wednesday while they were conducting a test on a pregnant woman to determine the foetus’ gender.

A team of district authorities and health officials, led by Karnal Civil Surgeon Vandana Bhatia, caught Brij Bhushan, who runs the Karnal Ultrasound Centre, and his compounder Amit while conductingthen sex dtermionation test, whih is banned under law. Karnal town is some 120 km from here.

The team was accompanied by police officers.

The officials seized a China-made portable ultrasound machine and other equipments.

‘The woman, who had come there for the test, tried to run away by jumping over a wall. However, the members of the team caught her. The woman has been identified as Neelam, resident of Sampla Kheri in district Kaithal,’ a state government spokesman said here.

The woman has a one-and-a-half year old girl and was three months pregnant.

Earlier in February this year, the doctor’s clinic in another part of Karnal was sealed for carrying out sex determination tests.

Bhushan had then hired the new place in a residential area to carry out his illegal activities.

Haryana has the worst sex ratio among all states in India – 877 females per 1,000 males. The national sex ratio, as per Census 2011, is 940.

‘Action would be taken against the doctor and his compounder under the provisions of PNDT (Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques) Act,’ the spokesman added.

Sex determination tests are banned under the PNDT Act to check the practice of aborting female foetuses.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/haryana-doctor-held-sex-determination-test-123053316.html

Women use Egg Timer test to find out how long is left on their biological clock

A WOMAN’S fertility future has long been the great unknown, reports Elisa Black

First you’re not even sure you want kids then, when you finally decide it’s time, you have no idea how long it might take to fall pregnant.

You could be one of those fortunate women who falls pregnant the first time they try, it might take a few months before you strike it lucky or, years down the track, you might be wondering why you’re still not pregnant.

Unlike men, who have famously become fathers into their dotage and beyond, women’s ovaries are a little more capricious.

We are born with all the eggs we are ever going to have.

And every year, their numbers dwindle, from our fabulously fecund 20s, to our thriftier 30s, before our ovaries finally shut up shop in our 40s. But women’s bodies are complicated things and, for any number of reasons or no reason at all, some women find it hard to have a baby much earlier on.

And this is even worse news when that woman has put off children until later in life due to career, or not meeting the right partner, or it just not feeling like the right time.

But more and more Australian women are deciding to try to remove the mystery surrounding their their fertility with a local test that assesses the number of eggs they have left.

The Egg Timer Test, pioneered by Adelaide IVF clinic Repromed, estimates the number of eggs left within the ovaries and gives women an opportunity to make a more informed decision about when to start a family.

While the test isn’t new, the amount of women interested in it is increasing and it has been implemented in about a dozen clinics around the country in the last 18 months because of demand.

The Egg Timer involves a single blood test and a pelvic ultrasound between days three to five of a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Hormone levels are combined with the scan results to give an estimate of ovarian reserves.

Dr Kelton Tremellen, Repromed deputy medical director and Associate Professor at the University of South Australia, who is the inventor of the Egg Timer test, said while the test was originally designed to help predict patients’ response to IVF stimulation treatment, it soon became apparent the test could be useful for women who were debating the best time to start trying to get pregnant.

“It gives an accurate assessment of how many eggs you have for your age, relative to your peers,” he said.

“By this, I mean it identifies women who have significantly fewer eggs left within their ovaries compared to other women of the same age.

“But the results are quantitative rather than qualitative. If you get a bad result it doesn’t mean you can’t fall pregnant or that your eggs are low quality.

“Rather, it indicates that you are likely to have an early decline in fertility and go through the menopause earlier than average. For this reason, women found to have low ovarian reserve should not further delay conception if possible.”

While many women are considering pregnancy later and later in life, Dr Tremellen said the ideal candidate for the test was a woman in a relationship in her early 30s.

“The typical woman who has been requesting the test, a woman in her 40s, is not the ideal patient. We already know that there is diminished egg quality at that age,” he said.

“A woman in her early 30s, who’s in a relationship, is the ideal candidate for the Egg Timer test because, if results are bad, she can bring forward the decision to have a child.

“It’s a contentious area for a patient who is not in a relationship. A bad test result puts them in a quandary. It’s a more difficult situation when you are considering egg-freezing or sperm donation and being a single mother.”

But the test has its critics.

Professor Robert Norman, fertility specialist and director of the Robinson Institute at Adelaide University, said he would not encourage women to have the test unless they were already having trouble conceiving.

“The results have zero correlation with women’s fertility,” he said.

“A woman could be 30 and have low egg reserves and still be normally fertile as the test tells you nothing about egg quality.

“With inadequate counselling the test can cause enormous stress.

“I have had many women coming to me who have panicked after receiving bad results and thinking they would need IVF and I think it is often used to scare people into inappropriate fertility treatment when they didn’t need it. Practically, if someone chooses to have the test and it galvanises them to not delay having a child, that’s it.

“But the best predictor of fertility potential is still age.”

There is often more to consider on the road to having a baby than just the biological.

Centacare relationships counsellor Pauline Connelly said that life was meant to be unpredictable and it was healthy to not always have control.

“The right time to have a baby is when you feel ready for it and when your relationship is ready for it,” she said.

“To be reliant on a scientific test can make us really vulnerable to situations or needs or urges that may cause us to make decisions that may not be the best for us at that time in our lives.”

Danielle James had a five year plan.

At almost 35, the police officer knew exactly where she wanted to be with her career by her 40th birthday but, single after her marriage dissolved four years earlier, she hadn’t given much thought to children.

It was only when her GP suggested she think about whether children might be a part of her future that she decided to take the Egg Timer test.

And the extremely fit avid surfer, who didn’t smoke, drink or take drugs, who ate well and took care of herself, was told that her egg reserves were extremely low and that she had just a three per cent chance of conceiving with IVF.

“You’re sold the dream from childhood,” she said.

“That you’ll meet the prince, buy the house with the white picket fence, and have children, but for so many women it doesn’t happen in that order.

“I’ve always been a woman who takes control of their life.

“I just immediately thought I need to take control of the situation. I became as educated as I could so I could make my own choices.

“It wasn’t my choice to become single at 31, but it was my choice what I did from there.”

Danielle decided immediately to start trying for a baby and, with the aid of a sperm donor, underwent IVF for two years.

The results were not good.

“The first time there were hardly any eggs and they were so expired that even if they had been able to be fertilised they wouldn’t have lasted,” she said.

“I had another go but at that point was told that IVF with my own eggs was virtually impossible.”

Thinking the only option was to buy a donor egg from America, Danielle accepted a security job in Iraq to try to raise the $60,000 needed. But before she left for the Middle East, she managed to convince her doctors to let her give IVF one more try.

“That last shot was my son,” she said of Flynn, who was born in 2008.

“I’m so glad I took the test because I didn’t expect that result, you just don’t know.

“I’ve explored the option of more children and I’d love to have them but, realistically, if my eggs were that bad at that age it doesn’t look good now.

“I could not imagine my life without Flynn and there’s no place I’d rather be than with him.

“I’m very lucky, he brings so much joy to my life.”

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/women-use-egg-timer-test-to-find-out-how-long-is-left-on-their-biological-clock/story-e6frea6u-1226036610247?from=public_rss

Hong Kong limits mainland Chinese women giving birth

Hong Kong is restricting the number of mainland Chinese women allowed to give birth in the city’s hospitals which are struggling to cope with the tens of thousands who arrive each year.

The number of mainland women who opted to deliver across the border accounted for nearly half of Hong Kong’s 88 thousand births last year. The Hong Kong government has placed a freeze on accepting non-local women into public hospitals until the end of December. It’s all part of a much broader picture: how Hong Kong can support an influx of babies that ultimately will have rights to education, employment and welfare.

Reporter: Sonja Heydeman
Speakers:Professor Gabriel Leung, Under Secretary for Food and Health, Hong Kong government

HEYDEMAN: Hong Kong’s government has come under immense pressure in recent weeks after doctors made a rare public call for a cap on the number of babies delivered in the city as resources for local mothers are stretched thin. The Hong Kong government’s Under Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Gabriel Leung says the main issue involves the capacity of the health system in both public and private sectors to deal with pregnant women who want to give birth in Hong Kong. He says the objective is for local Hong Kong women to have a place in a hospital of their choice.

LEUNG: My undersatnding in agreement with the private hospitals is they would be given priority and I’ve been given the reassurance that they have been given priority, even in the private sector since 2006. So that is the overiding policy objective number one. Then secondly the key question is how should we and what policy levers we should be using to ensure the highest possible quality of care for pregnant women to give birth in Hong Kong and this would apply to all pregnant women who give birth in our system and of course how could we make sure that any medical needs of newborn babies be taken care of best?

HEYDEMAN:Professor Gabriel Leung says a freeze on accepting non-local women in the public hospital system is a temporary stop gap measure.

LEUNG: While we try to plot a way forward in concert with all vested stakeholders into this particular issue. So in fact the public hospital bookings have been filled until October November. So for all intents and purposes we really have only one month left in 2011. And as for 2012 most of those babies have not yet been conceived so we still have a month or two to finalise our plans and then we will have a whole package of policy announcements to deal with this problem comprehensively.

HEYDEMAN: Many mainland Chinese mothers are keen to give birth in Hong Kong, because it will entitle their child to right of abode and education. In 2010, figures showed 40 thousand Chinese babies were born in Hong Kong .. accounting for 45% of all Hong Kong births .. a more than a 10% increase since 2005. Professor Gabriel Leung says clearly this is more than just a health services issue. He says it’s part and parcel of a much larger approach to population policy.

LEUNG: Really the obstetrics and the neo-natal health service is really the first of many issues we need to address comprehesively in the medium term, including if and when these newborns choose to as they come to Hong Kong for schooling, that would be an education issue and of course an employment which some view quite positively because Hong Kong like most developed nations has an aging population and a population pyramid that increasingly looks like and inverted triangle, rather than a true pyramid so that’s the labor issue. And then there would be associated welfare issues with regards to the provision of health services as well as other welfare services and social services to these newborn babies who would become Hong Kong permanent residents by birth.

HEYDEMAN: Professor Leung says these issues need to be discussed openly within the community.

LEUNG: What we need to do in the immediate future in the next month or two is to ensure the two overriding policy objectives are met in terms of the health services and then in the medium term to really think through, throughly discuss and flesh out all the issues with regards to education, welfare, social services and ultimately the population policy the make up of Hong Kong society in the coming decades.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/asiapac/stories/201104/s3188498.htm

Dual career couples opting for surrogacy on rise

Career demands are apparently forcing even fertile couples to consider surrogacy as an option to have children.

While the number is still a handful, and hence not a worrisome social change, infertility experts feel the day is not far when more working couples go for surrogacy to avoid a break in their careers. Take the case of Anitha and Anil (names changed) who went for surrogacy. They now have an 18-month-old daughter. Although Anitha was capable of bearing a child, her 30-year-old businessman husband felt they could not afford to take a break from their careers. “We have a home loan and a vehicle loan to repay. We also have aged parents to take care of. The surrogacy procedure was expensive, but at least, my wife can concentrate on her career,” says Anil. Had Anita, who manages a software company, chosen to their own child, says Anil, she would have had to quit her job, and repaying loans would have been difficult considering there are always ups and downs in business. Of their own However, Anil and his 28-year-old wife are open to having a child of their own in future. Dr Ramesh of Dr Ramesh Hospital said that in the last one-and-a-half years, he had come across several fertile couples from abroad and in India wanting to have a child through surrogacy. “We usually try and persuade such couples not to go for surrogacy, as they are capable of having their own child. But when they insist, we cannot do anything. Things have now changed in our society too. One cannot say whether this is right or wrong,” he says. Bangalore Assisted Conception Centre had also received two such queries a few months ago. However, many doctors felt surrogacy was not something to be encouraged. “We have had queries from couples in the US, England and India, too. But I don’t want to take responsibility since a lot of legal and monetary issues are involved,” said Dr Sulochana Gunasheela of Gunasheela IVF Centre. More accepted Women having medical problems in conceiving are looking at India with great hope. With a surrogacy procedure in India costing five times less than in the Western countries, many foreign couples and Indians as well are going for it. Dr Ramesh says awareness and acceptance of surrogacy among Indian couples has increased in the last five years. A change observed even by Shrusti Charitable Trust, which provides and looks after women offering to become surrogates. Chandrakant, the Trust’s general manager, said that from about 10 surrogate requirements in 2003, they were conducting 25 surrogacy programmes in 2010. While 15 surrogates were carrying for foreign couples, the rest were for Indians. “The requirements from Indian couples are also increasing but the demand is more from the US and the UK,” he said. Win-win solution Women who agree to become surrogates often see it as a solution to their financial problems. It’s a win-win solution. For 26-year-old Prema (name changed), a housewife and mother of three boys, surrogacy is a way to educate her children. “We are not financially well off. I want my children to study in an English medium school at least till SSLC,” she says. Currently, Prema is seven months’ pregnant. The foreign couple for whom she is carrying, have already visited her four times, and promised to pay her Rs 2 lakh after their child’s delivery. That is besides the Rs 3,000 maintenance she has been receiving every month during pregnancy.   http://www.deccanherald.com/content/152450/dual-career-couples-opting-surrogacy.html

China’s workforce ‘dries up’

The seemingly endless flow of young Chinese workers that helped to create the country’s economic miracle has now finally “dried up”, according to a leading economist.

Workshop of the world: young workers in decline due to strict Chinese policies on the size of the family Photo: AFP

For decades, China has been able to rely on its vast workforce to manufacture a host of goods more cheaply and efficiently than anywhere else in the world.

But now China’s leaders are worrying that the country’s one-child policy has begun to stem the tide of young workers ready to step forward into the country’s factories.

“Each year, the number of new workers joining factories is smaller than the number of old workers who are retiring,” said Zhang Zheng, an economist at the elite Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. “The supply has dried up,” he added.

Last year, according to his calculations, only 154 million people under 30 were part of China’s enormous 550 million-strong industrial workforce.

Mr Zhang added that it was not just demographics that was sapping the workforce of younger staff, but also the growing ambition of young Chinese to pursue further education and then white-collar jobs.

The shortage of young workers is a headache for Chinese factory bosses, who need workers that can put up with long hours and work that demands physical strength, precision and good eyesight.

As a result, wages have shot up by anything from 15 per cent to 40 per cent in some areas, making China a more expensive location for foreign companies to manufacture their goods.

“Chinese companies have to accept the fact they have to raise wages,” said Mr Zhang. “And foreign clients will have to accept that China is not just a place to manufacture cheap goods. Without rising prices, fewer Chinese companies will be willing to take orders,” he added.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8409513/Chinas-workforce-dries-up.html

China: Family Planning Official Stabs Man to Death

LINYI CITY, SHANDONG PROVINCE, China, April 6, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ — The following is submitted by Reggie Littlejohn, President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers:

On March 21, Family Planning Officials entered the home of Xu Shuaishuai to seize his sister for a forced sterilization. When they could not find her, they beat Xu’s father. When Xu defended his father, one of the Family Planning Officials stabbed him twice in the heart with a long knife. Xu died on the way to the hospital.

Local government authorities have not apologized to Xu’s family, nor have they arrested the murderer. The local news agencies have declined to report the murder.

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers extends its condolences to the family of Xu. We also forcefully condemn this atrocious crime. We demand that the Chinese Communist Party bring the family planning murderer and his accomplices at the Family Planning Office to justice.

The murder of Xu underscores the brutality of the coercive enforcement of China’s One Child Policy. This coercion is directed not only against the women themselves, but extends to family members, including siblings, parents and grandparents.

The fact that no action has been taken against the murderer demonstrates one of two things: either the Chinese Communist Party sanctions murder to enforce its One Child Policy, or the CCP has lost control of its Family Planning Officials and is unable to bring the murderer to justice.

This murder is a shocking and extreme example of how coercive family planning presses fear into the hearts of the Chinese people every day. Women who become pregnant without a birth permit — illegally pregnant — are terrified of discovery and forced abortion. Fathers feel helpless to protect their wives and children. Paid informants — friends, neighbors, co-workers – tear down trust in Chinese society. Family members are detained and tortured.

The One Child Policy, moreover, is causing a demographic disaster for China. Due to the traditional preference for boys, girls are disproportionately aborted. This “gendercide” has given rise to a critical gender imbalance: there are now an estimated 37 million more men than women in China. This gender imbalance is a driving force behind sexual slavery, not only in China but in the surrounding countries as well.

In the year 2030, moreover, China’s retirees will overtake the ability of the diminished youthful population to support them. And because of the lack of young workers, China is no longer a source of inexpensive labor and is losing foreign investment to other nations. See, e.g., “China’s Workforce Dries Up.”

The CCP instituted the One Child Policy in 1980 to enhance China’s economic prosperity. This same Policy has now become China’s economic death sentence. Why does the CCP insist on keeping this policy long after it has served its purpose? Could it be that the purpose of the One Child Policy is no longer to control the size of the population, but rather to keep a tight fist on social and political control? Could it be that the One Child Policy not only results in terrorizing the population, but in fact instilling terror has become its very purpose?

How does this affect us? We (the people of the United States, England, and other nations) are helping finance the infrastructure used in coercive family planning in China. The international community funds UNFPA, United Nations Family Planning Fund, as well as IPPF, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Marie Stopes International. These organizations are operative “abortion providers” in China. How many of these abortions are forced?

In 2008, then Secretary of State Colin Powell found that UNFPA was complicit in coercive family planning in China. The IPPF website openly declares, “The China Family Planning Association (CFPA) plays a very important role in China’s family planning programme. It supports the present family planning policy of the government, which is appropriate for the present national situation . . .” www.ippf.org/en/Where/cn.htm. The website for Marie Stopes International, lists as “major partners” the Family Planning Commissions of several provinces in China. www.mariestopes.org/Where_we_work/Countries/China.aspx

Why are we financing the infrastructure of forced abortion in China with taxpayer money?

To sign a petition against forced abortion and sexual slavery in China, click here.

To watch a four-minute video, “Stop Forced Abortion in China!” click here.

To see the report of the murder published on Boxun, click here.

http://www.earnedmedia.org/wrwf0406.htm

40,000 women a year from China go to Hong Kong to give birth

Hong Kong, March 31 (DPA) Hong Kong’s public hospitals are struggling to cope as 40,000 women a year from China cross the border to give birth in the wealthy city, a minister was quoted as saying Wednesday.

Health Secretary York Chow said the number of mainland Chinese women giving birth in the city had risen from a few hundred six years ago to nearly half Hong Kong’s 88,000 births in 2010.

‘It really puts pressure on our obstetrics services and neonatal intensive care units and even maybe paediatric services,’ Chow was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

‘This is a real problem we need to tackle,’ he said. ‘… Our basic principle is we have to give priority to local mothers.’

Chow did not outline any specific measures to tackle the influx but was expected to meet hospital officials and doctors to discuss the issue, the newspaper said.

Heavily pregnant women from China have flooded over the border to give birth in Hong Kong since cross-border travel restrictions were substantially eased in 2003.

Babies born in Hong Kong are entitled to residency along with free education and health care in the former British colony, which remains substantially wealthier than neighbouring southern China.

Maternity fees for mainland Chinese women have been increased to around $5,000 per birth to try to reduce the influx, but the move has proved to be little of a deterrent.

Hong Kong reverted to China sovereignty in 1997 but has a separate financial and judicial system and maintains border controls with mainland China. China’s one-child policy does not apply to Hong Kong.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/40-000-women-china-hong-kong-birth-20110330-205134-143.html

Woman charged in suicide attempt after fetus died

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s prosecution of a pregnant woman accused of killing her fetus by swallowing rat poison during a suicide attempt could discourage women from seeking prenatal care, medical groups have argued in a court brief.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Women’s Association, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and other groups filed the brief in a Marion County court Friday on behalf of 34-year-old Bei Bei Shuai, who was charged with murder and feticide last month.

Police say friends took Shuai to a hospital in Anderson after she told them she swallowed rat poison Dec. 23. She was transferred to a hospital in Indianapolis, where she gave birth Dec. 31. The baby named Angel Shuai died three days later.

Shuai spent more than four weeks in inpatient psychiatric care, according to The Indianapolis Star. She was recovering from depression when the prosecutor filed charges three weeks ago, said her attorney, Linda Pence. Shuai has been in jail since then. A hearing is set for Tuesday to determine whether she should be released on bail.

The medical groups argue in a brief co-written by two professors at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis that the charges against her should be dismissed.

“The goal of these prosecutions is to promote fetal welfare, but in fact it’s more likely that they will endanger fetal welfare, because now pregnant women may have to be worried because a trip to the doctor’s office may end up as a trip to jail,” said professor David Orentlicher, who helped write the brief. Orentlicher is a doctor as well as a lawyer, while his co-author, professor Jennifer Girod, is a nurse and an attorney.

Orentlicher said the case could keep pregnant women from seeking prenatal care if they feel they could be accused of mistreating their fetus.

“Prosecuting pregnant women who are trying to harm themselves is very bad public policy,” Pence said. “This is the most expansive interpretation that a prosecutor could give.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has also submitted a brief to the court, arguing that charging Shuai with a crime for attempting suicide is unconstitutional because a man or woman who wasn’t pregnant would not have been charged for the same act.

A spokesman for the Marion County prosecutor’s office said the agency is reviewing the documents filed on Shuai’s behalf and has no comment.

http://newsandtribune.com/local/x930488827/Woman-charged-in-suicide-attempt-after-fetus-died

Can Women Be a Catalyst for Japan’s Renewal?

{sometimes the capitalist press just spells it out so clear. this piece not only explicitly spells out capital’s basic contradiction re: women but also talks about the way crisis and devastation can kickstart capital accumulation.}

Japan faces the daunting task of rebuilding after the earthquake and the tsunami. But these natural disasters struck a nation with deep structural issues, including a slow-growth economy, an aging population, often sclerotic political, bureaucratic, and business leadership — and significant workplace discrimination against women.

Many commentators have speculated that Japan’s response creates the possibility — though hardly the certainty — of broader renewal. Indeed, prior to the natural disasters, The Economist in a special report on the Japanese economy last November stated that “people almost seem to be yearning for a proper crisis to shake the country out of its stated lethargy, ingrained after 20 years of economic stagnation and almost 15 years of decline in the working age population.”

Japan’s unequal treatment of working women is no mystery:

• Employment rates for Japanese men are 20 percent higher than for women, the greatest disparity in the industrialized world. On average, women only earn 60 to 70 percent of compensation paid to men.

• A 2006 UN study found that Japan was last among industrialized nation in economic empowerment of women, with women holding only 10.7 percent of managerial positions in government and business (compared with 42 percent in the U.S.). The World Economic Forum’s recent analysis of women’s progress in politics, economics, education, and health showed that Japan ranked 101st out of 134 nations, down from 80th in 2006.

• Japanese women are often put on an “administrative” job track, not a “career” job track by Japanese companies. And, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis, nearly 70 percent of Japanese women leave the work force after having their first child and don’t return to work due, among other things, to absence of child care and inflexible work conditions (in contrast to the U.S. where only one-third don’t return to work after having a child).

• In Sony, 3.2 percent of the managers in Japan are women, with women constituting 32 percent of managers in the U.S. In the past year, Japan Airlines named its first woman flight captain in its air-freight subsidiary; American Airlines had its first woman pilot near a quarter of a century ago. Kirin Beer recently announced it was going to double its female managers by 2015 — to six percent! The November Economist analysis reported that there are more women directors of companies in Kuwait than in Tokyo.

• Japan again is last in the league rankings among industrialized nations for representation of women in the national legislature.

• The rates of participation in the job market of Japanese college-educated women are 5 to 15 percent less than other developed nations. And, at the elite Tokyo University, women only make up 20 percent of the student body.

The impact of this differential treatment is a significant loss of economic growth, according to a 2010 economic study by Goldman Sachs (“Womenomics 3.0: The Time Is Now” [PDF]). If the gender employment gap could be closed (80 percent of men work; 60 percent of women), then more than 8 million additional people would participate in the economy (with attendant increases in production and consumption), which, the study argues, would increase Japan’s GDP by 15 percent.

The reasons for this fundamental problem of women’s workplace differences in participation rates, job tracks, wages, the professions, and leadership include: weak and poorly enforced anti-discrimination laws; poor diversity programs in firms and government; inadequate and insufficient child care; a patriarchal society with aging leadership and few women role models; pressures to have children in a de-populating society; and rigid immigration laws (which prevent both women and men from entering Japan to provide essential functions). These gender-specific causes relate, in turn, to the broader traditional culture of Japan which has made institutional change in the past generation so difficult and which would include such characteristics as humility, loyalty, respect, seniority, and consensus.

The need for significant change comes not just from fissures in institutions revealed by the recent earthquake and tsunami but from the much remarked-upon long-term demographic tsunami which threatens Japan. With current birth rates, Japan’s current population of 127 million will decline to under 100 million by 2046 and to about 90 million by 2055, according to the Japan government. The working-age population (ages 18 to 64) was 50 million in 1950, 87 million in 1987 and will be 50 million again in 2050. In 2000, four workers supported one retiree, but by 2020 only two workers will support a retiree. And those over 65 were 20 percent of the population in 2006 and are estimated to be 40 percent of the population in 2055.

So Japan must confront a basic paradox. It needs much greater participation of women (and women immigrants) in productive jobs at all levels of the economy to increase growth and provide more workers per retiree. Yet it also needs higher birth rate to slow the absolute decline in total population and the inexorable increase in proportion of the society over 65. It thus faces the same issues as other nations of work-life balance, of men and women sharing more equally in day to day family responsibilities, of making a productive career and child-rearing, for women who wish it, the hallmark of success, not a painful trade-off.

Japan, unfortunately, starts significantly behind other industrialized nations — and resolving the paradox will require a concerted and sustained effort, with changes in public policy (e.g. anti-discrimination laws, more child care, child-care credits tied to work, etc.) and in the private sector (e.g. changes in attitudes, aggressive programs to give women opportunities, and to promote them).

In the very near term, Japan still has to find the dead, house the homeless, repair the infrastructure, and deal with the uncertain aftermath of the nuclear plants. The disasters have, however, raised deeper questions about the structure and practices of Japanese society, politics, and economics. Whether processes of fundamental change can occur is a question for the future.

But if deeper cultural change is to occur then improving the role of women in the workplace — and providing flexible support so family and work co-exist more easily — could be a leading indicator, indeed a vital catalyst.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/can-women-be-a-catalyst-for-japans-renewal/236820/

India’s Surrogacy Boom Awaits Legal Oversight

(WOMENSENEWS)–Chandini, 27, holds the hand of her 6-year-old daughter as she enters an in vitro fertilization center for a checkup.

“I had to change two buses to make it to here,” she says in a hushed voice, smiling as she wipes the sweat off her forehead with her cotton sari.

Chandini says she became a surrogate mother to earn money for her family.

“I want a better life for my daughters,” she says.

Her husband’s earnings as a daily wage carpenter – around $80 a month – isn’t enough to support their two daughters, so Chandini works as a housemaid and has become a surrogate. She’s been promised almost $4,500 for carrying and delivering this fetus for a Canadian couple, who couldn’t bear their own child.

“This money means a lot to me,” she says.

Hundreds of Indian women rent their wombs to earn money for their families. And the number is growing here, where commercial surrogacy is legal and there are so far no laws or governmental oversight.

Since India legalized commercial surrogacy in 2002, in vitro fertilization centers have multiplied, attracting aspiring parents from around the globe, says Sanjay Agarwal, chairman of SATYA, an advocacy organization for surrogate children’s rights.

The low cost of infertility treatment in India – nearly one-quarter of the cost in developed nations – and the modern assisted reproductive techniques available here make India a top choice for infertility treatments, according to the Indian government’s medical tourism Web site. The Confederation of Indian Industry predicts that commercial surrogacy will be a $2.3 billion industry by 2012.

Unofficial Surrogacy World Capital

Gujarat, a state in western India, has become the unofficial surrogacy capital of the world.

Dr. Nayna Patel, who became the face of the Indian surrogacy industry when Oprah Winfrey profiled her and her Gujarat clinic, Akanksha Infertility Clinic, in 2007, says the money earned from being a surrogate mother transforms lives.

In India, 42 percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day, according to UNICEF.

“It’s only for our financial difficulties [that] my husband let[s] me do it,” Chandini says.

Sighing, Chandini adds that “daughters mean burden” in India, referring to the steep dowry that many families must pay their daughters’ husbands when they get married.

But Manasi Mishra, head of a surrogacy study at the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Research, says that surrogate mothers’ lives aren’t improved that much financially.

Surrogacy also raises legal concerns, says the center’s director, Ranjana Kumari, as there aren’t legal provisions to protect the surrogate mother, child or parents-to-be.

The majority of surrogate mothers dislike the way clinics treat them, according to the center’s surrogacy study. Women are often coerced into repeated inseminations if the first one fails, not allowed to meet the receiving families and paid only after relinquishing the baby to the clinic.

Kumari says commercial surrogacy also has social ramifications. Although Western cultures accept it, traditional Indian values condemn it.

“A surrogate mother can face many levels of violence, including social ostracizing,” Kumari says.

But Patel disagrees.

“All the reputed IVF clinics have been following many guidelines,” she says. “Who says that surrogate mothers are exploited?”

A Dangerous Process

SATYA’s Agarwal says health care conditions here also make it a dangerous process for women, who tend to have children of their own to care for.

“Is it ethical for a country like India, which has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, where a woman dies during childbirth every seven minutes, to promote and allow commercial surrogacy?” Agarwal asks.

The Indian Council of Medical Research has drafted a bill to govern surrogacy.

“The bill will take some time to become a law,” says Dr. R.S. Sharma, a member of the drafting committee.

Chandini says she doesn’t tell people — not even her children — that she’s a surrogate mother.

“Akanksha has specialized counseling programs for the to-be surrogate mother,” Patel says, to help with the social stigma and potential pain of giving up one’s baby. “They are made to meet the commissioning parents, too. And of course they are taken good care of.”

Chandini says it isn’t easy, but that she has few other options.

“It takes a heart to give away a baby you feel growing in your womb for nine months,” Chandini says. “It’s what being poor makes you do.”

http://womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/110330/indias-surrogacy-boom-awaits-legal-oversight?page=0,1

Welsh girls to get morning-after pill for free

LONDON (AP) — Women and girls as young as 13 in Wales can get the morning-after pill free without a prescription from pharmacies, beginning Friday.

The legal age of consent for sex in Britain is 16, and some critics have slammed the policy as hypocritical and encouraging young girls to have sex.

The initiative is aimed at fighting teen pregnancy and was first announced last year by Welsh Health Minister Edwina Hart. She said new ways were needed for teenage girls to get access to emergency contraception. Wales has some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Britain, which in turn has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in western Europe.

The morning-after pill contains hormones that stop women from becoming pregnant if taken within about three days of having unprotected sex. It is not suitable for women with certain health conditions like a history of blood clots or liver disease.

The morning-after pill is already free to women across the U.K. if prescribed by their doctor or a sexual health clinic, but Wales is the first region to offer the pill for free without a prescription in its more than 700 pharmacies, though there are similar small-scale policies in parts of England and Scotland. If bought over the counter, the pill typically costs about 25 pounds (US$40).

Welsh officials said their plan focuses on preventing teenage pregnancies by offering sex education and condoms but that it is also necessary to introduce wider use of the morning-after pill.

“While (condoms) remain the best form of contraception, from 1 April, pharmacists in Wales will be able to provide the morning after pill to individuals and provide discreet counseling and advice on contraceptive use,” said the Welsh Assembly government. “Pharmacists have a key role to play in the reduction of unwanted pregnancies, especially when coupled with advice.”

Some critics called the initiative superficial and doubted it would have much impact on the teen pregnancy rate.

“This will be looked upon as a quick fix for girls,” said Josephine Quintavalle, founder of the Christian group Comment on Reproductive Ethics. “It gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want without talking to their parents.”

Elsewhere in Europe, the morning-after pill is available in Germany with a doctor’s prescription and is free for women under 20. In France, teenagers under 18 can also get the pill for free at a pharmacy without a prescription or their parents’ consent. In Scandinavia, the morning-after pill is available to teenagers over 16 in pharmacies but the age limit is not strictly enforced. The pill is free in youth clinics but must be paid for in pharmacies.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3FIGmN8tj55mot0gTJJu52FzX2g?docId=3c67d0adfd13487cb23c0455d0e1effa