Where have all the young girls gone?

The widespread availability of ultrasound scans in India is giving rise to abortions of female foetuses on an unprecedented scale, according to new research by Professor Sonia Bhalotra from the University’s Center for Market and Public Organization.

Her study of ‘sex-selective’ abortion in India reveals that nearly half a million girls are aborted each year, which is more than the number of girls born annually in Britain. The practice is concentrated among relatively rich and educated Hindu families. According to Professor Bhalotra, this is consistent with ‘modern’ women being more receptive to new technologies and their wanting to have fewer children. She also suggests that Muslim women may have a stronger abhorrence of abortion.

Before this study, there was considerable anecdotal evidence of girl abortion in India, but no direct records of the practice. Using information on half a million births in India over more than three decades, this research identifies a dramatic decrease in the ratio of girls to boys being born after, and only after, the arrival of ultrasound machines in India.

It finds that families with a firstborn son have less of an incentive to engage in sex selection than families with a firstborn daughter. The strategy of comparing the ratio of girl to boy births in the population before and after the arrival of ultrasound, and in families with and without a firstborn son takes out of the equation factors other than foeticide that might influence the sex ratio at birth.

Sex-selective abortion is illegal in India since 1996 but it is continuing at an increasing pace. Ultrasound scanners are getting smaller and more mobile and a scan costs about £10, which is inexpensive for the rich and affordable for the poor. Advertisements in rural areas highlight how small this sum is relative to the cost of dowry. Ultrasound technology is improving continuously, enabling more reliable resolution of the foetal image earlier in pregnancy.

The research also shows that parents are conducting prenatal sex selection even after they have one son. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the ideal family structure for Indian families is to have two boys and one girl.

Son preference is an old tradition in India and other parts of Asia. Previously, poor families with limited resources for food and health care prioritised their sons because sons deliver later-life advantages such as old-age security. This has, over the centuries, led to a gradual erosion of the share of girls and women in society through neglect. This research suggests a new characterisation of the problem: girls from richer families are now being eliminated before birth on an unprecedented scale.


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From Popular Science

Birth Control Pills Shown to Alter Structure of Women's Brains

You aren't yourself anymore. It's a familiar complaint heard by women who have recently gone on birth control pills. Now studies are providing evidence for what many of those women, and the men who love them, have long known intuitively: the pill can alter the female brain, making a woman act like a different person.

The pill turned 50 this year, and it has gone through many iterations since the Food and Drug Administration gave the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle a green light to market the first oral contraceptive on June 23, 1960. Drug companies continually roll out contraceptives containing lower doses of hormones and entailing fewer side effects. But women who have gone on hormones can point to the effects that have stubbornly endured: moodiness, depression, decreased libido. (This last one makes some birth control pills perversely effective. Not only do they protect you from pregnancy if you do have sex, they also zap your desire to have sex in the first place -- and turn you into an unstable mess, which may in turn zap your partner's interest in sex.) But believe it or not, we still know very little about the consequences of taking daily hormones on a woman's brain.

That is changing, say Craig H. Kinsley and Elizabeth A. Meyer in Scientific American. They point to a recent study in the journal Brain Research comparing the brains of women on birth control pills with brains of other women and men. When the study's authors examined high-resolution images of participants' brains, they found the women on hormones showed more matter in some areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognitive activities like decision-making.

The Brain Research study prompted breathless news reports suggesting that the pill makes you smarter. But Kinsley and Meyer point out that the brain works like a "neural beehive," and disturbing one part of the hive could impact the other. The fact that one brain region becomes larger than the next does not mean a woman on hormones is more intelligent or effective. It is also possible that her brain is going haywire. (Kinsley and Meyer actually use the word "catawampus.")

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