Six-thousand girls per day are mutilated in their genitals. 6-0-0-0. Meanwhile, 600,000 women and girls YEARLY die during childbirth.
Quite a byline for Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the L.A. Times today:
Women and ‘gendercide’
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator, lives under 24-hour protection because of death threats against her by Islamic radicals since the murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the film -snip-
- In countries where the birth of a boy is considered a gift and the birth of a girl a curse from the gods, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.
- Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons.
Cross-posted at Daily Kos
One United Nations’ estimate says that between 113 million and 200 million women around the world are “missing.” Every year, between 1.5 million and 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect. As the Economist, which reported on the policy paper, put it last November, “Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler’s Holocaust.” How could this possibly be true?
The Economist reports:
Poor health care means that 600,000 women are lost each year to childbirth (a toll roughly equal annually to that of the Rwandan genocide). The World Health Organisation estimates that 6,000 girls a day (more than 2m a year), mostly in the poor world, undergo genital mutilation.
Let me put a fine point there: “a toll roughly equal annually to that of the Rwandan genocide.” Can you wrap your mind around such numbers? I can’t.
I say that we must condemn those who, for the sake of purity would mutilate their daughters. I say we must also condemn those who force abortion upon women & girls simply for the sake of avoiding giving birth to a girl. (I’m looking at my toddler daughter while writing this. Thanking heavens and the gods that she is born under my protection.)
Although when looking at South Dakota and other places I fear for her future. I fear there are just too many who do not have her health and happiness in mind. I fear for my girl, who’s not even three, from those “true believers” who cling to purity. I also fear for the girls of the world who must cower because village elders or her parents have a scalpel with her name on it.
Then there are those who would kill a girl for the sake of family “honor.” Don’t have enough cash? You’re dead. Hymen not intact? Dead as well.
* In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners. These are called “honor” killings, though honor has nothing to do with it. Young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men who have married them. These are called “dowry deaths,” although they are not just deaths, they are murders.
Such an honor; to be killed for your family’s good name. Is it fair to condemn? I believe it is. Cultural relativism be damned to hell.