[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INDIA'S MISSING GIRLS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-99
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Matthew J. Connelly, Ph.D., professor, Columbia University....... 7
Sabu George, Ph.D., independent researcher....................... 22
Ms. Jill McElya, vice president, Invisible Girl Project.......... 27
Ms. Mallika Dutt, president and chief executive officer,
Breakthrough................................................... 37
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Matthew J. Connelly, Ph.D.: Prepared statement................... 11
Sabu George, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 24
Ms. Jill McElya: Prepared statement.............................. 30
Ms. Mallika Dutt: Prepared statement............................. 39
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 62
Hearing minutes.................................................. 63
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: Material submitted for the record............... 64
The Honorable Ami Bera, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California: Material submitted for the record......... 68
Sabu George, Ph.D.: Material submitted for the record............ 73
INDIA'S MISSING GIRLS
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3 p.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The hearing will come to order, and good
afternoon to everyone.
Today's hearing will examine the problem of India's missing
girls. While for most of us today our attention is drawn to the
unfolding crisis in Syria--as a matter of fact, I began this
morning on C-SPAN's Washington Journal program and yesterday
introduced a resolution calling for the establishment of a
Syrian war crimes tribunal--other atrocities continue unabated
around the world. We cannot ignore these atrocities, among the
most egregious of which is violation of human rights of the
girl child and women in India.
Women in India are confronted with a compounding crisis. By
most estimates there are tens of millions of women missing in
India due to devaluation of female life beginning in the womb.
Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide have led to
lopsided sex ratios. In parts of India, for example, 126 boys
are born for every 100 girls. This in turn leads to a shortage
of marriageable women, which then leads to trafficking in
persons, bride selling and prostitution.
I point out as prime sponsor of the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act we have seen the consequences of the missing
girls play out with devastating consequences not only in India,
but in the People's Republic of China as well.
Perhaps the best figures we have concerning the magnitude
of the problem come from India's 2011 census figures, which
finds that there are approximately 37 million more men than
women in India. Indeed Prime Minister Singh has addressed this
issue head on, stating, and I quote him in pertinent parts,
``The falling child sex ratio is an indictment of our social
values.'' He says, ``Improving this ration is not merely a
question of stricter compliance with existing laws. What is
more important is how we view and value the girl child in our
society. It is a national shame for us that despite this,
female feticide and infanticide continue in many parts of our
country.''
Even when they are not killed outright either in the womb
or just before birth, the bias against girl children manifests
itself in situations where family resources are limited and
little food is available; in boys being fed before girls,
leading to greater incidence of malnutrition among girls and a
mortality rate that is 75 percent higher for girls below the
age of 5 than for boys.
The desire for a male child can be so great that there is a
trend toward sex-change operations for girls between the ages
of 1 and 5, a process known as genitoplasty. Each year hundreds
of girls reportedly are pumped with hormones and surgically
altered to turn them into facsimile boys. India's National
Commission for the Protection of Child Rights has correctly
stated that this highly unethical procedure is a violation of
children's rights as well as a perpetuation of the age-old
preference for boys and biases against the girl child.
But the roots of the present problem lie not only with
cultural factors, but also misbegotten policy decisions,
including population control policies that were hatched in the
United States and, as a matter of fact, right here in
Washington, which have had a disproportionately negative impact
on India's women.
We will learn from our witnesses that this includes
policies advanced by the United States Agency for International
Development, or USAID, and funded by foundations such as the
Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and abetted by
nongovernmental organizations such as the Population Council
and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
During the debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on a
bill to ban sex-selection abortion, I noted that for most of us
``it's a girl'' is cause for enormous joy, happiness and
celebration, but in many countries, including our own, it could
be a death sentence. Today, the three most dangerous words in
India and China are ``it's a girl.''
One witness today, Dr. Matthew Connelly, in his book,
``Failed Misconception: The Struggle to Control World
Population,'' traces the sordid history of sex-selection
abortions as a means of population control.
In her book, ``Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over
Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,'' Mara
Hvistendahl elaborates, and I quote in part, ``By August 1969,
when the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development and the Population Council convened another
workshop on population control, sex selection had become a pet
scheme.'' She goes on, ``Sex selection, moreover, had the added
advantage of reducing the number of potential mothers. If
reliable sex determination technology could be made available
to a mass market, there was a rough consensus that sex-
selective abortion would be an effective, uncontroversial and
ethical way of reducing the global population. Fewer women,
fewer mothers, fewer future children.''
At the conference, she goes on to say, one abortion zealot,
Christopher Tietze, copresented sex-selective abortion as one
of the 12 new strategies representing the future of global
birth control. Planned Parenthood honored Christopher Tietze 4
years later with the Margaret Sanger Award. And, of course, she
wrote the book, ``Child Limitation,'' and another book which I
read called, ``The Pivot of Civilization.'' In chapter 5 had--
was entitled ``The Cruelty of Charity'' and makes the case as
to why pregnant poor women should not get prenatal care because
you get more of those kinds of people who don't meet certain
criteria. And I have read the book twice. It is a devastating
indictment, and it certainly comported with the eugenics of her
time.
Hvistendahl writes that today, and I quote her again,
``There are over 160 million females missing from Asia's
population.'' That is more than the entire population of the
United States of America, female population that is. And gender
imbalance, which is mainly the result of sex-selective
abortion, is no longer strictly an Asian problem. In Azerbaijan
and Armenia, in Eastern Europe, and even among some groups in
the U.S., couples are making sure that at least one of their
children is a son. So many parents now select for boys that
that has skewed the sex ratio at birth of the entire world.
In the global war against baby girls, renowned AEI
demographer Nicholas Eberstadt wrote in the New Atlantis, and I
quote him,
``Over the past three decades, the world has come to
witness an ominous and entirely new form of gender
discrimination, sex-selected feticide implemented
through the practice of surgical abortion with the
assistance of information gained through prenatal
gender-determination technology. All around the world,
the victims of this new practice are overwhelmingly
female; in fact, almost universally female. The
practice has become so ruthlessly routine in many
contemporary societies that it has impacted the very
population structures, warping the balance between male
and female births, and consequently skewing the sex
ratios of the rising generation toward a biologically
unnatural excess of males.''
Many European countries, including the United Kingdom, as
well as several Asian countries actually ban sex-selection
abortion. Even four States in America--Arizona, Illinois,
Oklahoma and Pennsylvania--proscribe it.
Sex-selection abortion is cruel and discriminatory, and it
is legal. It is violence against women. Most people in and out
of government remain woefully unaware of the fact that sex-
selection abortion was a violent, nefarious and deliberate
policy again that was foisted upon us by the population control
movement.
While India has taken steps to curb these practices, indeed
passing a law to ban sex-selective abortion, and tempered
cultural facts such as the need for brides to provide a high
dowry that contribute to parents looking at their daughters as
a liability, these laws are largely--or irregularly, I should
say, enforced.
Moreover there are laws at the State level which exacerbate
the problem, mandating that parents only have two children,
penalizing those who exceed this number, and denying benefits.
This leads inevitably to sex-selective abortion and
particularly in poor areas female infanticide, as parents will
opt to have a son over a daughter especially when their first
child is a daughter.
We hope that this hearing will help us better understand
how we can play a role in curbing such horrific practices and
abuses against the girl child and women. What, for example, can
we do to ensure that companies based in the U.S., such as
General Electric, whose ultrasound equipment is used to
determine the sex of a child in utero, take steps to prevent
what should be a tool to promote life for both mother and child
from being used as an instrument of death? Given the past role
of U.S. agencies such as USAID and coercive population-control
policies, what oversight do we need to conduct and make sure
that such abuses do not creep their way into existing programs?
Similarly to what extent are organizations that receive funding
from the United States Government implicated in such practices?
What role can our State Department play beyond compiling
information regarding what is occurring in India with respect
to what some have labeled gendercide to influence positively
the Indian Government so its reform laws and policies that
exacerbate skewed sex ratios, such as two-child laws, two-
child-per-couple laws. By shining a light on what is happening
in India with its missing girls, we hope to move forward toward
a world where every woman is valued and deeply respected
because of her intrinsic dignity, and where every child is
welcomed regardless of his or her sex.
I yield to my good friend Dr. Bera.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and thank you for
holding this hearing really addressing the incredibly important
issue of gender inequity not just in India, but certainly
gender inequity throughout the world. And I look at this issue
not just as a Member of Congress; I look at this issue as a
doctor. But also the focus of this hearing is India, and I look
at the issue as an Indian American, but the most important
title I hold today is being the father of a daughter. And on
that day where ``it's a girl'' was told to us by our doctor,
that was an incredibly joyous day.
When my wife and I think about how we are raising our
daughter, we are raising her to be a strong woman. We are
raising her to be in full control of her body and her choices.
We are raising her to stand up against discrimination and not
succumb to discrimination. And it is not enough that we are
raising our daughter that way, but it is an imperative that
every girl and every woman on this planet is empowered that
same way. And at its core that is the purpose of why this is
such a critical issue.
Son preference and sex selection really are products of
this gender discrimination, and to address them we really have
to deal with the underlying causes of bias against women and
girls, and these are incredibly complex issues. There is a
complex web of socioeconomic and cultural factors that result
in discrimination against girls. You know, the chairman
identified a few of those. These then manifest in sex-selective
practices. So we have to address those underlying causes.
The only way to achieve long-lasting and real change is
really to engage in community-level campaigns to change
attitudes and change cultural norms that perpetuate this bias
against women and girls.
Other manifestations of gender discrimination are the
abhorrent rates of sexual violence that occur; child marriage;
domestic violence; honor killings; the denial of basic health
care, including basic family planning and maternal health
services.
I just had the chance to visit India recently, and there
are grassroots efforts, and there are some very strong Indian
women that are addressing this issue at the root cause, and we
will hear from some of these strong women today and our
witnesses. But when I was recently in Mumbai, I had the
opportunity to visit a group called SNEHA that was started by
women doctors in India. The whole point was that they saw far
too much gender discrimination, they saw far too much violence
against girls in India. And they would go into the slums and
start working with these girls to build up their self-esteem,
to build up their strength. But they didn't just work with the
girls, they also worked with the young men to change their
attitudes, these boys, to make sure that they understood that
women were equal to them, and they grew up as boys into men
with an understanding of this gender equity.
So it is incredibly important that we empower organizations
like this that are homegrown organizations that are working at
the grassroots level with girls to empower individuals.
The best role for the U.S. to play is to remain a strong
supporter and leader within the global community in order to
best promote women's rights and the freedom of every woman to
make personal decision about her health, her body and her
future to really empower women.
The U.S. is a global leader in providing investment in the
health and rights of women and girls globally. USAID's family-
planning programs support healthy timing and spacing of
pregnancies, community-based approaches, contraceptive security
and integration with HIV and maternal and child health
programs.
The best way to empower a person and to prevent sex
selection is actually to empower someone to plan when they are
ready to start a family, to empower someone to plan when they
are ready to get pregnant. That is just basic logic, and that
is the best way to prevent sex-selective abortion.
More than 222 million women around the world want to delay
or prevent pregnancy, but they don't have access to basic
contraception. In 2012, nearly 300,000 women died because of
complications due to pregnancy and childbirth. Fully meeting
the needs of contraceptive access and effective birth spacing
would annually prevent 1.8 million deaths of children under 5.
That is 25 percent of all child deaths. We can do better than
this, and we have the tools and the methodology to help reduce
this.
I also want to make clear when talking about women's human
rights, including reproductive rights, coercion of any kind is
unacceptable in the provision of health care, and international
leaders should oppose any human rights abuses by working to
promote women's health and rights globally.
Women everywhere should have the right to determine if,
when and how often they have children. Likewise, all women
deserve quality health care during and following pregnancy for
both themselves and their families. And as a physician, I know
that when women have equal access to quality health care, they
lead a more empowered and fulfilling life.
While the goal is to mitigate gender discrimination and
move toward equitable women's human rights, it must be done so
in a way that maintains her rights to make any reproductive
health decisions that she deems appropriate for herself and her
family.
Finally, I would like to submit for the record an article
written by Sneha Barot of the Guttmacher Institute regarding
son preference and sex-selective abortion bans.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
I would now like to go to Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the
hearing. I am not going to have any long remarks because they
are going to be calling votes, I think, in about 35 or 40
minutes, and I am anxious to get started.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, and this is something that is near and dear to my
heart. As the chairman knows, I just applaud him on holding it.
But as we start to look at the value that we place on life and
little girls in particular, there is no greater tragedy than
the story that is unfolding in India and in China as well, but
particularly in India. And as we see this, it is something that
we must stand up and be a strong voice internationally, and
also be one that is unflinching in what we condone or don't
condone. There are many times that we look at the economic
viability of a nation, and we condone behavior in another
nation as a trading partner, and yet we wouldn't condone it
here in the United States.
And I think that that same standard that we apply when we
do not put value on life, and particularly in India on girls,
not only does it create an imbalance, but it also goes further
to just have horrific stories that are told day in and day out
that touch my heart.
It also promotes human trafficking, as we know. And my
daughter, who has just turned 20, has made it a life goal to
intervene in terms of human trafficking. And when you start to
hear those kinds of stories on a daily basis where they have
names, and they have parents, and they have grandparents, it is
touching. It is something that I am committed to working with
the chairman on to do all that we can do to stop this plague.
And with that I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Meadows.
I would like to now welcome our distinguished witnesses to
the witness table, beginning first with Dr. Matthew Connelly, a
professor of history at Columbia University. He has written two
books and many articles. One of the books that he has written
is entitled, ``Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control
World Population,'' published in 2008, and is particularly
relevant to our discussion today. This book was widelyacclaimed
when it came out and has been the point of much discussion
since. Dr. Connelly has also served as consultant to the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation and the International Assessment
and Strategy Center.
We will then hear from Dr. Sabu George. Dr. George is an
expert in the field of female infanticide, girl child neglect,
and female sex selection, and has worked on these issues for
over 28 years. He has written one-child sex ratios--he has
written on child sex ratios, genocide and sex-selection, and on
emerging technologies of sex selection. He has undertaken
extensive field research in India, was involved with the public
interest litigation in the Indian Supreme Court to restrain the
misuse of fetal sex determination. Dr. George has been
appointed by the Government of India to monitor the issue of
fetal sex determination and has spoken many times, again, on
this topic.
We will then hear from Ms. Jill McElya, who is an attorney
whose experience includes extensive public service. In 2008,
she moved to India to serve in a field office of an
international human rights organization. While living in India
for 2 years, Jill and her husband were exposed to the practice
of female gendercide. After extensively studying the issue and
forming relationships with Indian organizations that combat the
problem, they founded the Invisible Girl Project to end
gendercide in India by raising global awareness concerning the
loss of female lives in India, pursuing justice for lives lost,
and assisting Indian organizations in the rescue and care of
vulnerable Indian girls.
We will then hear from Ms. Mallika Dutt, who is a founder
of global human rights organization Breakthrough. Working
worldwide through centers in India and the United States,
Breakthrough seeks to make violence and discrimination against
women unacceptable by engaging in a diverse range of actors to
promote values of dignity, equality and justice. Ms. Dutt is
member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves on
several boards and communities including the World Economic
Forum, Global Agenda Council on India, Games for Change and the
Public Interest Project.
Dr. Connelly, if you could begin, you all could come to the
table, I would appreciate it.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW J. CONNELLY, PH.D., PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Connelly. Chairman Smith, members of the committee,
thank you for giving me this opportunity.
I am a professor of history at Columbia University, and I
spent some 10 years researching population control around the
world. I worked in more than 50 archives, and I interviewed
some key figures in USAID, in the Indian Government, in the
United Nations and leading NGOs, and what I discovered is that
sex-selective abortion is not something that we can blame on
backwardness. Rather than a problem of benighted people who
need to be developed, it was actually development professionals
who first promoted the idea of helping people to have only
sons.
The story begins in the 1960s when the U.N., the wealthiest
foundations and a host of Nobel Prize winners agreed that
population growth was one of the gravest threats facing
humanity. Both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms of
1968 agree that population control should be an urgent
priority. Paul Ehrlich's ``The Population Bomb'' famously
predicted massive famines, and he called for using food aid to
force poor countries to control population growth. But Ehrlich
was a Stanford biologist, so he also called for more research.
And I am going to quote from ``The Population Bomb'': ``If a
simple method could be found to guarantee that first-born
children were males, then population control problems in many
areas would be somewhat eased.''
The head of research at the Planned Parenthood Federation
of America, Steven Polgar, is also an advocate of sex-selective
abortion and for the same reason. Bernard Berelson, president
of the Population Council, considered it one of the more
ethical methods of controlling population growth. It is not
surprising, considering some of the other methods that Berelson
and Ehrlich were considering, such as introducing sterilizing
agents into the food and water supply.
The Population Council sent the head of its biomedical
division, Sheldon Smith, to New Delhi, and it was Segal--or
Sheldon Segal, I should say, who first introduced Indian
doctors in how to determine the sex of a fetus, the practice
that he promoted as a means to control population growth.
The men who led population-control programs--and they were
all men--gave no consideration to the consequences of reducing
the relative number of women. In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
and Indonesia, Western diplomats helped pay people to be
sterilized, and Western consultants advised denial of health
care and education to those who refused.
When in 1975 Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency
and used the police and army to march people to sterilization
camps, foreign donors increased their support. In the span of 1
year, India sterilized some 8 million people and gave the green
light to States to make sterilization compulsory. ``At long
last,'' World Bank president Robert McNamara declared, ``India
is moving to effectively reduce its population problem.'' Now
instead, Indira Gandhi was voted out of office, and in 1978,
Indian feminists succeeded in having sex-selective abortion
banned from government hospitals.
Now, India had long been a testing ground for population
control, but popular democracy limited what could be done
there. It was Communist China with its one-child policy who
took population control to new extremes. Now here again Western
advisers provided crucial support. The Chinese affiliate of the
International Planned Parenthood Federation had 20 million
volunteers. U.N. computers were crucial in calculating the
number of birth permits for each commune, and U.N. centers
trained 70,000 personnel to back them up.
Periodic crackdowns peaked in 1983, when China sterilized
over 20 million people and carried out 14 million abortions.
The U.N. responded by awarding the head of the program with the
first U.N. Population Award. Indira Gandhi was the cowinner.
A bit of resistance in rural areas gradually led Chinese
cadres to allow farmers with one daughter to try to have a son,
but a key element in this mutual accommodation was the
ultrasound machine; ultrasound machines, which started to
become imported abroad, at least some of them through
international grants and loans. It is hard to know how many
because the World Bank, for instance, won't open up its files
to let us find out what it was providing.
But it is important to note that this wasn't just a matter
of international organizations and nongovernmental
organizations. It was also a matter for the private sector, and
especially General Electric. Producing ultrasound machines was
GE's first joint venture in China.
Now, to be sure, both India and China have tried to stop
the practice, but these governments long sought to make parents
ashamed merely for having more than one or two children when
they did not make actually make it illegal. Now, why should we
be surprised when couples now ignore government decrees,
especially when they would limit their ability to plan their
own families?
Now, similarly for decades American experts and activists
advised Asian countries to adopt these manipulative and
coercive measures, employed untested and risky medical
technologies, and used Western loans and grants to pay for it
all. Now, the results were so disastrous that in India the term
``family planning'' itself is completely discredited, and
advocates must use euphemisms like ``family welfare.''
Now, we should not, therefore, expect that Asian countries
will be eager to hear our advice. But it is precisely because
the U.S. took a leading role in population control that we
cannot pretend we have no responsibility for the consequences.
The first step is simply to acknowledge this history. It
was only after a long, hard struggle that family-planning
organizations rejected population control and rededicated
themselves to the principles of reproductive rights and health.
As long as these organizations refuse to come to terms with
this history, they will be vulnerable to accusations that they
are still trying to control people instead of empower them.
Now, the world is a very different place, and these
organizations are very different from what they once were, but
the future will present radically new challenges and new
dangers. Now, we know longer face a population explosion after
all, and more and more countries are adopting incentives to
boost birth rates, and they may be tempted to try more coercive
measures. My great fear is that instead of population control
to reduce population growth, we are going to see the return of
pronatalist programs and policies like we saw in the 1930s in
places like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Now, many individual couples are desperate to have
children, of course, and this is especially the case in African
countries which have stratospherically high infertility rates.
And in wealthy countries some are tempted to use biotechnology
to have superior offspring, or even to outsource their
pregnancies to India.
These issues pose excruciating ethical choices, but none
turn on intractable issue of when life begins. Instead, they
turn on something no less fundamental: The quality of life and
the way our choices can make life more or less meaningful.
Now, my hope is that pro-life and prochoice people of good
faith will begin to find common ground. We must work together
to ensure that everyone has access to birth control and the
help they need to bear and raise children without coercion or
manipulation. We might agree that society has an interest in
potential life to be balanced against the rights of the mother
and together fight sex-selective abortions worldwide, and we
could demand that infertility treatment become part of
comprehensive health care for all, in Africa no less than the
United States.
To conclude, it is not enough merely to insist on choice.
Choices can be conditioned by design or default in ways that
lead to new kinds of oppression. And the defense of life can
also become a symbol without substance if the effect is to
drive people to breed. Reproductive freedom is a cause that can
and must stand on its own now more than ever, but it can only
take flight if it is animated by a vision of social justice in
which every one of us is conceived in liberty and created
equal. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Connelly, thank you very much for your
testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Connelly follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Mr. Smith. Dr. George.
STATEMENT OF SABU GEORGE, PH.D., INDEPENDENT RESEARCHER
Mr. George. I am most grateful to the U.S. Congress for
holding this hearing. Particularly I thank the chair, Chris
Smith, Representative Mr. Bera, and Mr. Weber, and Mr. Meadows
and Mr. Marino for coming at this point despite a crucial
debate on Syria in the House.
I am greatly honored to be here, to be invited by a
committee which was once chaired by a great Congressman like
Tom Lantos of California.
My name is Sabu George, and I have been working on
protecting girl children for the last 28 years. I have had the
great privilege of studying public health and nutrition. I
lived in U.S. for 9\1/2\ years.
And I am delighted that a lot of the remarks which Mr.
Chris Smith spoke about, the early history, is something I
don't need to repeat. And in terms of the challenges in terms
of what population control faces today, Mr. Bera has addressed
that, so I think we have many things which I need to state
which has already been said.
Yes, we are dealing with sex selection has become a
genocide. More girls in India and China are eliminated every
year than the number of girls born in America. Today you have 2
million girls born in America, but we have more than that being
eliminated in India and China. Particularly in the Indian
context over last decade, India eliminated more than 6 million
girls. This is much larger than the number of Jews eliminated
during the Holocaust.
And I think what I would like to emphasize very clearly, we
have a history of discrimination against women for several
centuries, but the kind of magnitude of discrimination what we
are seeing in the country today has no parallel. And I think
Chris Smith has emphasized it, and therefore what I would like
to emphasize is that what we are facing today in eastern India,
southern India, in Kashmir, in Himalayan States, which does not
have the forms of discrimination against women as in northwest
India, we are seeing these parts. So the role of the medical
profession, the role of corporations cannot be ignored.
While I think we have seen emergence of consequences like
forced polyandry, which is hardly talked about in northwest
India, several men sharing one wife, which is common, the
levels of violence against surviving women are increasing, and
what is most disturbing for us is that in the coming decades,
what progress woman had achieved in education and employment
opportunities will indeed be very strongly affected because of
the threat of violence in homes and outside homes.
I think history of sex selection all of you have heard. But
I think coming to the corporations that the chairman Chris
Smith had talked about, the role of GE, I mean, you had the
Wall Street Journal write about it. Now I think I would like to
look at the role of Google, which today promotes new
technologies of sex selection. Today they are advertising new
products long before they are proven to be effective.
We would appeal to all of you to ensure that the U.S.
corporations respect Indian law. And recently we saw this case
of online advertisement which Google was caught in a sting, and
the Justice Department had a major settlement, got $500 million
fined from Google. We hope that U.S. corporations will abide by
the laws in our country, and I have a petition against Google
in the Indian Supreme Court. We have heard the kinds of
arguments like Google India tells us, you know, to the court,
we don't know who Google--what--who owns Google America. So we
hope, sir, that American corporations do not benefit from the
holocaust what is happening in our country.
We have a good law against sex selection, and I would like
to emphasize, sir, that there is a State like Maharastra, which
is one of the biggest States, where, because of the work of a
good lawyer like Varsha Deshpande, more than 50 doctors have
been convicted, which is a great thing in our Indian legal
system, which goes on perpetually.
And so law makes a deterrence. Unfortunately the rest of
India, we don't have that, and we do need to ensure that
changing mindsets is one part, but ensuring in the context of a
genocide that laws need to be followed.
And so you had mentioned about funding USAID. You had
mentioned about international organizations. I think what I
would like you to be very, very clear, sir, is that the
history, we should not forget the recent history. There are
times when USAID was thrown out of the country because the
Indian Government didn't like it. And I think it is extremely
important, sir, not just to focus on cutting funding to USAID,
cutting funding to international organizations, but engaging
with the government, dealing with what needs to be done,
because ultimately, you know, it is extremely easy in our
country to raise factions against any big powers and which will
not solve the problems of millions of our poor women.
And, sir, please do not see sex selection, which is an
extreme form of violence against women, as a problem of
abortion. It is extremely important in the Indian context where
entire responsibility of contraception is put onto women, where
men don't accept any responsibility, that women do have to have
rights for abortion in our country.
And so we request that the American Government, the
American Congress does indeed actively engage with the
Government of India, with the Indian Parliament and ensure
that, you know, this holocaust does not continue. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Dr. George.
[The prepared statement of Mr. George follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Ms. McElya.
Mr. Weber. Is it McElya?
Ms. McElya. It is McElya. Thank you. Very good. I think you
are one of two people I have ever met who actually pronounced
it right.
Mr. Weber. Your husband and me.
Ms. McElya. That is true.
STATEMENT OF MS. JILL MCELYA, VICE PRESIDENT, INVISIBLE GIRL
PROJECT
Ms. McElya. Chairman Smith, members of the subcommittee,
thank you so much for inviting me to testify today about an
issue that I have become very passionate about, and that is
India's missing girls. As you heard in my biography from
Chairman Smith, I was living in India, I am an attorney, and I
was working for a human rights organization. My husband is a
pharmacist, and he was doing medical camps in India at the
time. And that is when we were exposed in 2009 to the practice
of infanticide, which Chairman Smith talked about, which is the
killing of a little girl when she is born just because she is a
girl.
My husband was in a rural village in south India, and he
noticed that there were all these little boys running around,
and there were no little girls. He learned that in this village
the boys outnumbered the girls eight to one because of the
practice of infanticide.
He met a young woman I will call Prima today. Prima was the
twelfth daughter born to her parents. Her mother felt intense
pressure to have a son, and so she would become pregnant, give
birth to a little girl, and then she and her husband would kill
their own daughter. Once again, she would become pregnant
because there was pressure from her husband and her in-laws to
bear a son. She would have a daughter, and she and her husband
would kill their own little baby girl. They did this 11 times,
11 times, and then they had Prima. And they decided, well, I
guess we are not going to have a son; I guess we will spare
Prima's life.
This is a face, this is a name behind the reality of
infanticide in India. And when we were exposed to it in 2009,
my husband and I decided we must move to action to do whatever
we can in a country that we grew to love to combat this
terrible practice which is extreme discrimination against
little girls that has resulted in this gendercide, which is the
genocide of women and girls in India. And that is when we
founded Invisible Girl Project, and our mission is to end
gendercide in India. We do this through partnering with
indigenous organizations that are already doing wonderful work.
We support these Indian organizations to combat this
gendercide.
And so through our work we have learned, of course, that
infanticide is just a small part of this gendercide. As
Chairman Smith mentioned feticide, sex-selective abortion is
also a huge part of it.
I sit before you today, I am 8\1/2\ months pregnant with my
second daughter. If I were a woman in India today, I would
receive intense pressure, strong-arming, most likely, from my
husband and my in-laws, to receive a sex-determination
ultrasound to determine whether I was having a boy or a girl.
This is illegal in India. The Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques
Act of 1994 made this illegal. It is illegal to have an
ultrasound to determine whether you are having a boy or a girl.
But the law is not upheld. So as a pregnant woman, if I were in
India, my in-laws would likely be pressuring me to have this
sex-determination test done. If I complied and then realized I
was having a little girl, I would then receive intense strong-
arming to have an abortion just because I am pregnant with a
daughter.
This practice is so widespread throughout India. There are
estimates there are 2,000 sex-selective abortions performed
daily in India of little girls. There is an estimate that there
are 2 million little girls who are aborted annually just
because they are girls.
And I talk about the coercion that these women face from
their in-laws, from their husbands to bear a son, because
coercion is a huge part of this. These women are denied any
choice. They are forced to break the law, to have sex-
determination tests done, to have sex-selective abortions
performed, and this is against the law in India.
The law even recognizes the coercion. As an attorney, of
course, I have read through this act thoroughly. I have read
through the Supreme Court decisions on this act. And it is
important to note that the law recognizes the coercion by
family members. Family members can even be found guilty of
breaking the law. Unfortunately, though, this law is not
upheld, and so sex-selective abortion is widespread, and it is
proliferating.
As such, gendercide, infanticide, feticide, neglect, as
Chairman Smith mentioned, accounts for such a huge chasm in the
population. There is trafficking, there is marriage of child
brides, because 37 million men, as a 2011 census pointed out--
there are 37 million more men than women in India, and these 37
million men have no brides, they have no one to marry. So women
are trafficked in from other countries, they traffic children
to become brides, and, as you know, sex trafficking has become
a huge issue in this country.
People want to fight sex trafficking, but people don't
realize the route is gendercide, especially in India, because
there is this chasm in the population.
There are studies that also show that violence against
women is a result of gendercide, of the chasm in the
population. We are all familiar with the rape case that
happened in Delhi where there was a young woman who was a
student who was raped on the bus and later murdered. Well, she
died because of the rape, this gang rape. I will argue before
you today that violence such as this is because of this chasm
in the sex ratio between men and women, which is all a result
of gendercide.
As Americans we have taken the lead in asking countries to
report on how they are combating trafficking. Isn't the murder
of girls and women which leads to trafficking every bit as
important?
Countries must report on what they are doing to save the
lives of their daughters, and that is what I ask you today.
Just as my husband and I were compelled in 2009 to start
Invisible Girl Project to save the lives of little girls in
India, I ask that you take the lead, that your ears be open
today, and that you fight to save the precious lives of
voiceless little girls who cannot save themselves.
Let us ask these countries that have these huge chasms in
their sex ratios that are allowing this gendercide to go on to
report what they are doing to save their daughters so that
girls no longer go missing.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McElya follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Ms. Dutt.
STATEMENT OF MS. MALLIKA DUTT, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, BREAKTHROUGH
Ms. Dutt. Thank you, Chairman Smith; Representatives Weber,
Meadows and Bera--oh, we missed Representative Meadows. He just
walked out the door. But I thank the rest of you for being
here, and really thank you so much for your attention to this
very, very critical issue facing women in India and around the
world.
As you have all already pointed out, gender-based
discrimination is a global pandemic. It is the largest human
rights global pandemic, and it takes many, many different
forms, including dowry, honor killings and sexual assault,
rape. Just today the Delhi court handed down a verdict on the
gang rape that my copresenter just referenced. And really all
of these forms of gender-based discrimination and violence stem
from this larger issue of patriarchy and son preference that
plagues India and so many other parts of the world. And gender
bias sex selection is just another pernicious form of gender
inequity, a harmful practice, which, as we have already heard,
has led to a very alarming decline in the number of girls in
parts of India and, in fact, many parts of the world.
I am president of Breakthrough, a human rights group that
seeks to make discrimination and violence against women and
girls unacceptable. Our approach is to use multimedia tools
along with community engagement to really try and transform the
cultural norms and social practices that violate human dignity,
and that really underlie the many violations and abuses that
women and girls face.
We believe that human rights must begin in our hearts, in
our homes and in our own practices; that human rights, as
Eleanor Roosevelt so eloquently said, begin in small places
close to home.
Over the last 12 years, we have learned several lessons,
and based on that, I offer the following recommendations to
this committee: The United States must assume a position of
global leadership in confronting the underlying factors that
foster gender discrimination, first by sustaining and
strengthening investments in global health and development,
and, second, by advocating for the equity of women and girls to
be at the center of the global development agenda. This
approach, of course, is consistent with human rights
instruments, such as the International Conference on Population
and Development's Programme of Action, which the United States
has also endorsed.
Breakthrough is currently working to address the issue of
gender-based sex election in Haryana, which at 877 females to
1,000 males has the lowest sex ratio in India. What we are
doing in Haryana is to engage multiple community stakeholders
that include government officials, that include media
professionals, women and men in rural and urban areas, medical
practitioners, educational professionals, young people, doing
research for them to really look at the underlying causes of
gender-based sex selection so that we can challenge patriarchal
norms and son preference. This integrated approach is
increasingly being viewed as an effective one by U.N. agencies,
governments and many others.
In order to figure out the best communications and advocacy
strategy, we have conducted comprehensive baseline research.
And what we found through our interviews with these different
stakeholders is what all of you have already pointed out: There
are complex factors, social, economic and political, that
include dowry and inheritance laws; lack of women's agency in
relation to safety, security and sexuality; ineffective
implementation of our existing laws; and lack of women's
financial independence that leads to gender-biased sex
selection.
To be clear, bans on access to reproductive health are not
an appropriate solution. Similarly, research has found that
while technologies used for sex selection have compounded the
problem, they are not the root cause. So we believe very
strongly that access to value voluntary family planning and
safe and legal abortion remains vital to fulfilling women's
human rights. In other words, we should not take away the
rights of women and girls to promote their rights.
As was well documented by the professor to my right, gender
bias in India is also rooted in historical acts of
discrimination, including forced sterilization, coercive
reproductive health programs, and many other violations. I have
been part of the global women's movement to ensure that these
kinds of historical abuses are condemned, and that women's
rights are universally upheld. And I deeply believe that in
India, the largest democracy in the world, the path forward to
reducing widespread gender inequity and sex selection is
through comprehensive and community-based culture change
solutions that have to be driven by Indian stakeholders
themselves.
The most critical contribution that this committee can
therefore make now is to sustain U.S. investments in global
health and development. Current American aid to India has to
ensure access to education, food, water, energy and health
care, including safe childbirth and voluntary family planning
for some of the most vulnerable women and girls in the country.
All of these elements are vital to improving the status and
rights of women and girls and, with it, to reduce the
underlying causes of son preference.
Once again I would like to extend my thanks to all of you
for bringing attention to this very important issue.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Dutt.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dutt follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Let me beginning the questioning if I could with
you.
You know, Jill McElya made a point in her testimony that
some 2 million girls' lives are snuffed out through sex-
selection abortion in India every year, which is a horrifying
number. We, and I personally, with the killing fields that
occurred in Darfur, which is probably about 500,000, spent an
extensive amount of time, as did other interested Members of
Congress and human rights organizations, to try to bring
attention to and stop the slaughter in Darfur.
Mr. Weber. Mr. Chairman, it is 5,479 per day.
Mr. Smith. An extraordinary number of loss of girls' lives
simply because they are girls.
So I find it a disconnect, if I could, with all due
respect. I believe that pernicious bias and prejudice against a
girl child and women in India or anywhere else begins in the
womb, especially when such large numbers of girls are
slaughtered either through chemical poisoning or through
dismemberment. And I know methods of abortion are often
encapsulated with phrases or sloganized into choice rhetoric,
but the actual deed, with all due respect, is dismemberment;
pills that make the girl child or a boy unable to continue
living inside the womb, like RU-486, first starves them to
death, and then the second action of that chemical combination
is to cause the expulsion of the girl from the womb. And then
there is dismemberment, which is either D&E--and I have been
involved in the pro-life movement for 40 years, and I am
steadfast about human rights being from womb to tomb. And I
agree when you say, as you said so eloquently, gender-based sex
selection is another pernicious form of gender inequity, a
harmful practice that has led to an alarming decline in the
number of girls in parts of India and other parts of the world,
and then later on in your testimony you argue for continuance
of abortion.
We have that same argument going on here, as you know, and
you are here, but in the United States Planned Parenthood was
found through an undercover operation to be telling--and I have
watched them all, all of the undercover women who were
pregnant, went in, were told that if they wait until 5 months,
do a ultrasound, and if it is a girl, kill it. And one of those
Planned Parenthood clinics is right next to my office in New
Jersey.
I find a horrible disconnect there between empathy, love,
compassion and respect for the girl child in utero, and then a
willingness under the rubric of freedom of choice to say, but
nevertheless you can be killed through dismemberment, chemical
poisoning or some other way that is a an act of violence. So
help me to understand how you can argue both, if you will.
Again, and I will conclude on this before going, we have
seen the devastating consequences. India itself has outlawed it
as has the U.K., four States, as I noted. We are trying to do
it here and have failed, and it is growing in its incidence and
prevalence. It seems to me that if you treat the girl with such
impunity and prejudice while she is in utero, why do we expect
at the event of birth--and it is only an event that happens to
a child, it is not the beginning of life--that somehow, poof,
we are going to now show respect for that girl? That kind of
prejudice then gets--continues because it has been--it began
right from the start.
Ms. Dutt. So thank you for raising all of those very, very
important points.
I would like to share a story with you, if I may. In 1985,
a very dear friend of mine was in a car accident in Bombay, and
she, because she was so badly injured, ended up in a public
hospital which didn't have the greatest of amenities. And so
several of us who were friends spent time taking turns to be at
the hospital with her, because that was the only way she could
ensure the kind of care that she needed.
And so I had night duty for 2 nights in that hospital, and
she was placed in the women's wing, because that is where all
of the women were. And it was one of those sort of life-
altering experiences for me, because the vast majority of the
other women in that ward were young women who had been burnt
for dowry. So there were--I mean, there must have been at least
200 women in that ward. I would say 80 percent of them were
suffering from deep third-degree burns. They were covered with,
you know, bandages, in enormous pain. Many of those women were
on the floors on mattresses because there weren't enough beds,
and because I was on duty at night, I spent most of my time
running around the ward chasing off rats that were trying to
nibble at and eat the young women that were on the floor, or
then trying to get nurses there to give them pain medication
because they were in so much pain, and they were screaming so
much.
I shared this story with you to say that I believe that in
order to empower women, and in order for women to be able to
exercise the choices that they need to make about their lives
and who they are, that the right to abortion has to be part of
that narrative, because women are so deeply disempowered that
to take away rights in order to give them rights just doesn't--
it just doesn't make sense to me.
I totally understand what you are saying about the problem
of gender-based sex selection and how we are missing all of
these young girls, but I am not agreeing with you on the cause
and effect of this. It is not that that causes the kind of
violence and discrimination that women and girls face. It is a
lifecycle problem. If you come with me to Varanasi and meet the
widows who live on the ghat and the bank, who have been sent
there because they cannot live at home anymore after their
husbands are dead--just today we saw the sexual assault rape
conviction come down. I mean, I have worked with and dealt with
young girls and women who have been raped and violated in all
kinds of ways. And so this is my life's work. And again, I
would say that in order to promote women's human rights, you
can't take away rights from them.
Mr. Smith. I would just say very briefly--and I, of course,
respect you--many of us do see birth as an event. We look at
people like that, like Bernard Nathanson, who founded NARAL,
and was an--he did more abortions than perhaps anyone else in
his time. And when he stopped doing them he wrote in the New
England Journal of Medicine: ``I have came to the agonizing
conclusion that I have presided over 60,000 deaths.'' He ran
the largest abortion clinic in New York City at the time.
Those of us on the pro-life side, with respect to your
position and to you, do see abortion as a horrific form of
violence. It is not a benign deed. It either dismembers, hacks
to death, the Indian abortions, and they are done, you know, in
mid to later term in the gestational cycle, and, of course, sex
selection usually isn't done until about the fifth month when a
gender determination can be made. So these are big kids being
dismembered, and they die suffering excruciating pain.
We had a bill on the floor called the Pain Capable Unborn
Child Protection Act, and the overwhelming body of evidence--
and there is people who disagree, and there always will be--say
that these children feel pain. So not only are their lives
snuffed out violently, they do feel pain. And again, when it is
being done for the sole purpose or overriding purpose of
ridding that family of a girl, that is a form of
discrimination.
So I--again, I just convey that to you from my heart to
yours as a deep concern.
Did the Ford Foundation ever embrace--because I know you
worked there--sex-selection abortions?
Ms. Dutt. Oh, absolutely not. I mean, by the time that I
got to the Ford Foundation, which was at the end of 1996, the
foundation had a very strong reproductive rights program. And,
you know, having been part of the women's movement that was
involved in the Cairo conference, where we actually challenged
a lot of the population and coercive reproductive policies that
were described by the professor earlier, I am very much a part
of that movement, there is no way I would have gone to the
foundation if that is what their policies were.
One of the things that I did in Cairo was actually convene
a tribunal where women from around the world testified as to
their reproductive rights and the abuses that they had
experienced either at the hands of government policies, or
because of their denial to access to reproductive rights and
reproductive health services, including, you know, so many of
the issues that women face simply because of poverty and lack
of access to basic health care.
Mr. Smith. I was actually at the population conference for
a week and was part of the delegation under the Clinton
administration, and I was shocked, dismayed and sickened that
Madame Peng Peiyun, who I met with on another occasion in
Beijing, who ran the Coercive Population Control Program in
China and argued there was nothing coercive about the Chinese
program, told me that, and said the UNFPA is here, and they
give it a good, clean bill of health as well, in plain day
reminded me of those who said during the Stalin years in
Ukraine that there is no effort to destroy so many people
through famine, a deliberate policy of extermination of
Ukrainians, and then there were people who then say, oh, but
that didn't happen. Well, it was happening in China. She was
feted and lifted up as a great leader at the Cairo Population
Conference, even though she is one of the architects and was an
aggressive implementer of the egregious one-child-per-couple
policy.
Let me just ask one final question because of time. I want
everybody to--Dr. Connelly, you might want to comment on what I
was saying. Yes, please.
Mr. Connelly. Well, you know, as an historian I am not
always well informed about the present, but I will say that,
you know, for those who would like to do research, you know, on
the history of how the Ford Foundation worked in the field of
population control, and how the Ford Foundation changed in the
ways that Mallika Dutt has explained to us, you can just go to
the archive, and it is remarkably open, and you can read, you
know, file upon file of internal memos and correspondence and
so on.
On the other hand, you know, if you want to probe the
history of the Roman Catholic Church and its role in limiting
reproductive rights and supporting pronatalist policies, as I
have in Rome in trying to work the Vatican archives, you meet
stonewall after stonewall.
So I think as an historian, to be totally honest, I think
the Ford Foundation has come a long way. The Vatican, I think,
is less clear.
Mr. Smith. Let me go to Dr. Bera, and then if we have time,
I will do a second round.
Mr. Bera. I will try to keep my questions short so Randy
can ask some questions.
You know, I think there is general agreement across all of
us that coercion in any form is wrong and should be
unacceptable, whether it is done at the population level or
whether it is done at the individual level. Coercing someone to
do something that is not what they want to do, you know, is
just a basic fundamental principle. And the opposite of
coercion is how do you empower people to, you know, be strong,
to be able to make their own decisions, to stand up to make
their own decisions, to have the freedoms to make their own
decisions. And, you know, the subject of this hearing goes to
the most basic of fundamental freedoms: Control over your body,
control over making the decisions that are most sacred to you,
control over your reproductive freedom.
So I think all of us are unanimous that any sex-selective
practices are--you know, are heinous, and how they are put out
there, and certainly we should as an institution do what we can
to minimize sex-selective practices across the world. But these
are complicated issues that have complicated roots.
I think Dr. Connelly pointed out some of the historical
background that talked about where we are today. And these are
issues that, you know, are incredibly complex, that require
local solutions, that require solutions that are homegrown, and
whatever we can do as an institution to help empower that.
You know, let me ask Ms. Dutt a question. You did point out
a number of the weak causes and the complexity of why gender
discrimination, why discrimination against women and girls in
India, is so prevalent and so complex. Given your expertise in
this area, can you speak about some of the best practices that
are homegrown in India? You touched on your program, but those
practices that, you know, are empowering women, that are, you
know, providing reproductive health services to them, and, you
know, really kind of from the ground up that are in India.
Ms. Dutt. So in terms of some of the lessons learned--and I
will also ask Sabu to weigh in, because he has done so much
work in this area as well--I think that the best results really
emerge from programs that involve the local community in making
the program decisions and in making sure that the most
marginalized amongst the groups have access to those services.
I think that the other thing that is very important is that
you have to take a rights-based approach to providing services
to women. If you merely look at it as a health practice without
actually looking at the underlying issues that may enable or
prevent a woman from even being able to go to the doctor--I
mean, you can't just set up a clinic without looking at the
factors that enable women and girls to visit the clinic in the
first place. So it is those kinds of solutions that really take
into account the entire community and also bring in multiple
stakeholders.
Let me give you another example. One of the campaigns that
we did a few years ago was called Ring the Bell, which
challenged domestic violence by engaging men and boys to become
part of the solution. So we tried to shift men and boys'
engagement simply being seen as perpetrators to say, listen,
you have a responsibility to be a part of the solution. And
that reframing of the issue has led to a very different kind of
conversation around domestic violence in the States in which we
have been working. We have also seen a 15 to 20 percent
increase in reporting on domestic violence and an increasing in
awareness about the act as a result of taking a broader
stakeholder approach.
In our work on early marriage in Bihar and Jharkhand we
have just launched a campaign where we are really talking to
the fathers, because what we have discovered is that they are
the ones who are making the decisions around when their girls
and young women get married. And we just were having a lot of
success in engaging fathers to come to the table and say, we
are the ones who have to start making some of these differences
in order to move forward.
Mr. Bera. Dr. George, let me ask you a question. You
touched on the history of some of the laws that India has
enacted. What do you think the Indian Government has done well,
and then conversely, what are the things that you would suggest
the Indian Government should be doing?
Mr. George. Thank you, Mr. Bera.
As a doctor and as an Indian, I think you should look at
the role of the medical profession in our country. Since they
are so organized and so powerful, they tend to put a lot of
pressure on the girls. So, you know, those of us who are
campaigning against the misuse of the medical ethics and
technology, et cetera, have--like in the case of Maharashtra,
there has been quite an impact there because the law is upheld.
So we cannot give up only, you know, judicial systems. It
is a very slow process. I spent a significant amount of time in
the courts, from the 3rd of September, you know, I was there in
the Supreme Court. Now, the 17th I am missing because I am just
taking a few days to go back home.
So what I am trying to say is that, yeah, laws make a
difference, just like what Mallika said today with, you know,
the conviction of the people who were involved in the December
rape. Now, in that case there is the public outrage in the
country today that rape is unacceptable. But you do not see sex
selection as a crime, so therefore--yes, sir.
Mr. Bera. I was just going to say, just to make sure I am
hearing this correctly. You know, I was just in India a few
weeks ago when, you know, there was another rape case, in
Mumbai, and you saw this huge outcry of how this was
unacceptable. Is it accurate, then, you are not seeing that
same level of public outrage on sex selection?
Mr. George. Yes, sir. We have made some progress in terms
of seeing this as an issue of--you know, of like if--like until
2001, there was not even much concern about the problem of sex
selection. Then when the results of the census came out, you
know, we did see. So there is some discourse in areas like
Punjab, and it has been very badly affected. Like we are
looking at ratios of 700, you know. We have much more
discourse. But what we are frightened is the rest of the
country, you know, have to follow reaching this levels before
the society----
Mr. Bera. Would you suggest that is a starting point,
though, that actually engaging the public, creating this public
outrage, or this public--either one of you--is that the
starting point where the public actually gets engaged and says
this is unacceptable?
Ms. Dutt. I think that is a very critical point. I think
that we have to look at multiple intervention points. I think
the law is very important, implementing the law is very
important, but certainly creating public outrage is a critical
piece of the story.
I mean, that is one of the reasons why Breakthrough
believes in a culture change approach, and so we are in the
process of testing different communication routes, and are
looking to actually launch a campaign that is India's quest for
its missing girls, and engaging young people in the sort of
massive search where we really begin to question the underlying
factors that are leading to this problem in the first place.
Mr. Bera. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Ms. Dutt, this question is for you. I think you
said that sex trafficking--or maybe it might have been you, Ms.
McElya. The word is ``gendercide''? Which one of you all said
that?
Ms. McElya. I did.
Mr. Weber. Okay. That is an interesting comment when you
say it is gendercide.
So let me get back to you, Ms. Dutt. You said that some of
the women in the hospital where you went that night were burned
for dowry. Well, they were burned because they didn't have one,
they didn't have enough of one, because they were going to have
to come up with one? Explain that.
Ms. Dutt. So, you know, for whatever cultural reason, the
way in which many women who have been in their marital homes
are disposed of are by being burned. I mean, this is always----
Mr. Weber. So they are not shot with a gun or stabbed to
death; they are burned to death.
Ms. Dutt. Right. I mean, in the U.S., the homicide rates
are with guns, so in India we have burns. So that is the
phenomenon that I was referring to.
Mr. Weber. Okay, I got you.
And then you said in your paper that you are for safe and
legal abortion. Of course, as Chairman Smith pointed out,
abortion is anything but safe for the unborn child. Would you
agree with that?
Ms. Dutt. You know, I think that this is one of those
situations where, like I said before, I really deeply believe
that for women, if we are going to ensure that they have access
to their full human rights, that access to abortion, safe legal
abortion, has to be a part of the full complement.
Mr. Weber. The right to kill that unborn child is a human
right?
Ms. Dutt. You know, this is one of those conversations
where we could turn this into going around in circles. I really
believe----
Mr. Weber. Well, I am getting to a point here. It is about
the volume that has been mentioned here today numerous times,
that there is 786 women to 1,000 men, or 786 girls to 1,000
boys. Isn't that about the accurate--wasn't that about the
right ratio?
Ms. Dutt. Yeah, Representative Weber, but I think that the
point that I am trying to make----
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Ms. Dutt [continuing]. Is that in order to deal with a
wrong, you don't do another wrong. And so you don't take away
the rights of women in order to empower women.
Mr. Weber. Well, but I would submit this: If truly the
numbers, the discrepancies of marrying women, that is what is
cited in the paperwork over and over again--that sounds like
they are calling our votes--then would you be okay--if a woman
wants to terminate her pregnancy because it is not handy, not
good timing to have another child, it is inconvenient, do you
think that is a legal, a human right?
Ms. Dutt. I think that given the way in which--given the
many ways in which women are controlled and exploited and
abused, it is very, very important for women to have----
Mr. Weber. Ms. Dutt, it is----
Ms. Dutt [continuing]. To have control over their own
reproduction.
Mr. Weber. So she has full control to terminate that
pregnancy because it is inconvenient timewise.
Ms. Dutt. I think women need to make the decisions that
they need to make about their bodies, and their lives, and the
timing of their children, and that decision really needs to
reside with the woman.
Mr. Weber. I am going to take that as a yes that you are
talking about safe and legal abortion. And so if a woman
decides that it is inconvenient to have a child because she is
going to have a job, she is going on a trip, she has got other
children that need her, whatever reason she deems it
inconvenient, she terminates that pregnancy. That is what you
have said, you have written it in paper, safe and legal
abortion.
So let us do this: 786 girls to 1,000 boys. Would you be
okay if they went ahead and did selective abortion on males to
try to even up those numbers?
Ms. Dutt. You know, that is a really interesting question.
I have never been asked that question.
Mr. Weber. I mean, if a mother says, look, you know what,
our country has too many males, so here is a male, and so now
the trend is going to go the other way. We are going to
terminate the males. Would that be okay?
Ms. Dutt. You know, you really opened a very interesting
line of thought in my mind around this question. Like I said,
nobody has ever asked me this question before.
At the end of the day, I would just come back to making my
earlier point. I really do not believe that taking away rights
from women is the way to empower them. If you are going to
support the human rights of women and girls, we have got to
support the human rights of women and girls.
Mr. Weber. Do you support the human rights of men and boys
as well?
Ms. Dutt. Absolutely, and I----
Mr. Weber. You would not be okay with swinging the pendulum
the other way and aborting all of the males?
Ms. Dutt. Absolutely not. And, you know, Breakthrough's
mission statement says that we seek to make violence and
discrimination against women and girls unacceptable so that all
of us can live lives of dignity, equality, and justice.
Mr. Weber. The violence against unborn women, or men, or
children is okay.
Ms. Dutt. You know, women really need to have the right to
make those decisions for themselves, because the consequences
to them when they cannot are enormous.
Mr. Weber. So if a woman wants to kill her baby because it
is a boy, and she is aware of this discrepancy of numbers, that
is okay, that is her choice.
Ms. Dutt. Women must have access to safe and legal
abortion, and full access to safe health care.
Mr. Weber. That, in essence, would be reverse sex
selection; would it not? We would see the opposite of what you
are here today to discuss.
Ms. Dutt. I think that it should be clear from my remarks
that the idea behind promoting women's human rights is not at
the expense of men, but to get us to a world where all of us
can really live to our full potential.
Mr. Weber. Well, I would submit that there is 5,479 girls a
day in India that aren't getting any kind of world or any kind
of life.
Ms. Dutt. And you are absolutely right. I mean, I don't
think that any of us--and I certainly am not condoning gender-
biased sex selection. We do have a crisis. We have a very
serious problem, and that is one of the reasons why we are
putting so many of our organization's resources behind it. I
think the only place that you and I are disagreeing,
Representative Weber, are the solutions to it, but I think we
are totally in agreement about the scale of the problem and
what we need--and the fact that we really need to pay attention
to it.
Mr. Weber. You have already testified here today that you
have never thought about if it went the other way, where they
were aborting baby boys.
Ms. Dutt. You know, the thing is that nobody has framed the
question that way, and I thought that was a very interesting
way to ask it.
Mr. Weber. Well, think about that, because these are
children, and if women decide that they have got too many males
in India, then under the idea that women's rights or to
terminate their pregnancy for whatever reason, then it could go
the other way.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Marino.
Mr. Marino. Yes, thank you, Chairman.
Good afternoon, panel. I would like to explore a little bit
about the government's role from the national level down to the
local level. I read an article not too long ago, and I just
looked it up to make sure I had the facts right. Some time ago
there was--I may have the ages wrong--a 5-, 7-, or 9-year-old,
an 11-year old, three girls that were missing. They were found
a couple of days later in a well, dead. The mother reported
them the day that they went missing to the local police. The
police did nothing about it, and the village then protested,
actually blocked some type of road bypass, and got another
level of government to look at it. And then it was determined
that they were raped and then murdered.
What is--let us look at the national level. Is there a
serious attempt by the national government, by the Prime
Minister, by the members of the legislature, and by law
enforcement to address this issue, or is there a blind eye
turned to this? Anyone?
Ms. McElya. If I may, I want to respect and give Dr. George
also time, but as I mentioned before, I am an attorney, and in
my experience in working with a human rights organization in
India, I couldn't practice law, but I had a team of Indian
attorneys who were working for me. And in this international
human rights organization, what we did in the south of India
was we rescued people from bonded-labor slavery. And so I
became familiar with the judicial system, the whole process in
India of what starts a case. I became familiar with the intense
amount of corruption that exists and how you can get the public
justice system to work for the poor.
So to answer your question, the laws are in place on a
national level. I mentioned the PNDT Act, which was very good
law, that outlaws sex-selective abortion. In addition, these
crimes against women are illegal in India. And so on a national
level the laws are in place.
Mr. Marino. So why aren't they enforced?
Ms. McElya. So they are not enforced, I would argue,
because the lack of political will on the State level, on the
smaller level; because there is corruption that goes on. You
can even----
Mr. Marino. I was a prosecutor for 19 years, I was a
district attorney in Pennsylvania for 10 years, and I was a
United States attorney with George W. Bush. And I prosecuted
cases myself, even as the U.S. Attorney, murder cases, rape
cases, drug cases, organized crime. And I am sure the system
works fairly similar in your country to the extent that money
funnels down from the national government to the States,
correct?
Ms. McElya. Correct.
Mr. Marino. So what better way to force the lower levels of
government to follow the law and to enact the law by saying
funding is going to stop for this project for whatever money
funnels down.
So I am getting the impression that if the national
government wanted this really to occur, they can have an
enormous amount of influence over it, instead of saying, well,
the problem is with the States. And the States are saying, the
problem is with the smaller entities of government. I can't
imagine that--there are national prosecutors, correct? Please.
Mr. George. Thank you, Mr. Marino.
We have a Federal system like--you know, and there is
always conflict between states' rights, and unions' rights,
just like what you have in the U.S. But, see, our first
difficulty, like what you talked about rape. Now, in the last
few months, you know, like what we heard about the December
rape and what Ami Bera said about the Bombay rape recently. You
know, it is becoming unacceptable politically for the political
parties to support these kinds.
For instance, just recently one of the most well-known
spiritual leaders was put in jail because he was involved in
rape. So what I am saying, this would not happen, say, even a
year ago, so therefore, we are seeing progress. But, you know,
given the kind of, you know, injustice we have had for several
centuries, and given the virtual absence of women in public
life--like I come from State of Kerala who for 140 years have
had the largest proportion of women in our State. We have women
live 5 years longer than men, the longest life expectancy in a
State. But the role of women in public life is very limited. We
hardly have women in legislature. So what I am trying to say is
that it is a process we have to struggle with in terms of we
cannot just give up just because there is failure at many
levels, but what is interesting today, and people have decided
in our country, it is not acceptable.
Mr. Marino. Well, apparently the people from the village
who protested and were--made it known that they wanted
something done about this had an impact. Is there--and please
don't take this pejoratively, I am not criticizing. I am a firm
believer that--I have said over the years that the United
States cannot impose its form of democracy on other countries
because of the simple ideology and the history of that country.
Life is very valued here in the United States, very valued. Can
you tell me from your perspective, Dr. George, in India, how
does that--the value of life in India compare to the value of
life in the United States?
Mr. George. I think it is much more--let us look at the
Holocaust. Now, when the Holocaust was happening, it took many,
many years of denial. Like even in the late 1930s, for
instance, no country was willing to take on the Jews. So what I
am trying to say is, now, by the time when the American, you
know, Government was informed of it, you had Justice Brandeis
guessing going to meet the President, FDR, and talking about
what is happening in these concentration camps. Still there was
a lot of delay. So what I am trying to say----
Mr. Marino. It wasn't happening in the United States, not
that that is an excuse, because I wrote an extensive paper on
why did FDR wait so long to address this issue. But is it an
issue of ideology?
Mr. George. No, no. What I am saying is that what we
dealing--like today, for instance, like in China, there is
active public discourse on the question of sex selection, which
is very important. Like, in China there is still very little
public dialogue. So what I am trying to say is that when Chris
Smith talks about China, sir, and I think you need to recognize
that it is different. And the only way to deal with these
problems is to engage, and I think we can make a difference.
Mr. Marino. I am not arguing with you on the ideology, or
the history, or the mind-set of people in India. I am trying
to--I am asking you to educate me, to inform me as to is this a
factor?
Ms. McElya. I would argue today, and to be clear, just
because there is good law in place does not mean that there is
political will on the national level to enforce the laws.
Mr. Marino. That is my point.
Ms. McElya. I agree with you that there is not, and the
Supreme Court announced a decision in March 2013, this year,
saying the political will on a union level and on a State level
is nonexistent. So the Supreme Court acknowledges exactly what
you said, but the political will is not there. There has to be
a combination of political will as well as social demand; a
social demand for justice, a social demand for change, a social
demand to recognize that these girls' lives are every bit as
important as boys'.
Mr. Marino. Sure they are. There is no question about that.
Mr. George. Again, I mean, I heard--I was in the Supreme
Court. I intervened in this case that Jill is talking about. We
had a hearing on the 3rd. So what I am trying to say is that in
the State of Maharashtra, you know, the risk, the concerted
efforts of this lawyer, the political parties are supporting
the implementation of the law. So you have an example, sir,
that the laws have been taken seriously, and it has made a fact
of----
Mr. Marino. Let me pose this, then. We are going through an
issue concerning Syria, and the overwhelming, the overwhelming
numbers, percentages in the country, in the United States, not
to intervene is extraordinary. I have never seen numbers from
Republicans, Democrats, Independents and people who don't even
vote so high as to say, we do not want to get involved.
Now, you are looking for some help from the United States,
and the United States, for the most part, is always there to
try and help, but how do we sell to the American people the
idea of aid of some type or another, whether that is monetary,
or whether that is, you know, people on the ground through
USAID or some other entity--how do we convince the American
people if the national government in India does not appear to
take this seriously? Why are we going to spend the time, the
effort, the resources if India isn't taking what I perceive as
being the necessary immediate steps to implement the law?
Mr. Connelly. Can I say something?
Mr. Marino. Please.
Mr. Connelly. I mean, on the point of--and I agree with
you, it is a fundamental point, how do we understand why it is
that people apparently don't value life. I mean, to be fair, it
is an American idea to pay people money to agree to
sterilization. That was an American idea. And not only that, it
was an American economist working for the Johnson
administration who calculated the numbers to come up with how
much he should pay parents to agree to sterilization. And the
reason for that is that he calculated the future value of an
Indian life was less than nothing. And so it was for that
reason that he thought that it would make sense not only for
India, but----
Mr. Marino. But sterilization is very, very different from
murder. Okay? Very different.
Mr. Connelly. A lot of people died through botched
sterilization operations.
Mr. Marino. Granted, okay, I understand that, and I am not
mitigating that at all, but not in the numbers you are talking
about what is taking place in India. So that is a very tiny,
infinitesimal amount.
First of all, I can't imagine, I bet there is nobody in
this room that would agree with anything like that today. But
let us deal with the facts today that are at hand. There is an
abomination taking place in India. Just about every other
country in the world, when they have problems, whether they
like us or not, comes to the United States for help, and we are
known for that. And I am proud of that. But again, it is a
tough sell, given the financial crisis that we are in, given
the state of affairs around the world, and it sounds to me that
the national government can put pressure on the States, who can
put pressure on the locals to address this issue, I think,
seriously. Am I wrong?
Ms. McElya. Yes, I think you are correct. And just as we
require India to report on what they are doing to eliminate
trafficking, because of the Trafficking and Person Protection
Act----
Mr. Marino. So what do we do?
Ms. McElya. Let us institute something in our Government,
again, that requires them and other countries where we see that
there is a problem with gendercide to report on what they are
doing to protect their girls, and what they are doing on a
national level to put pressure on the States so that there is
no more elimination, so there are no more missing girls.
Mr. Marino. Does this have anything to do--I am sorry, I am
running way over my time, Chairman. Does this have anything to
do with trying to stabilize the increasing population in India?
Is there an ulterior motive here? Okay, this is a way to
resolve one of the major problems that we have?
Mr. George. That is a very shortsighted way, even if that
has been an intended or unintended consequence, because what we
are dealing with is incredible increase in violence against
surviving women. So therefore, you know, to come up with one
problem, you know, to resolve one problem population by
creating more violence in the society is no way to----
Mr. Marino. I agree with you. Don't think I am taking an
opposite side here. I am just asking, could that be a thought
in the national government's attempt to control the population?
Mr. George. Yes, sir. I mean, that is within sections of
the----
Mr. Marino. So it goes to ideology. It goes to--we have
problems in India, and I am just speaking generically, so in a
way to deal with those, we are going to turn our head to this
catastrophe that is taking place. We know it is an abomination,
but it could help stabilize our growing population. I mean, is
that--have you ever thought of this? Or has anyone ever talked
about this?
Ms. McElya. Absolutely, and I would argue yes. That is part
of the reason why they are turning a blind eye. That and, as
Ms. Dutt mentioned, just the preference for sons and the
discrimination against girls.
Mr. Marino. This isn't just a one-factor issue. I
understand that.
But thank you, you have educated me. And I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask each of our panelists, this would be
a basic yes or no question, whether or not you support or
oppose the Preconception and Prediagnostic Techniques Act of
1994, or the PND Act?
Mr. Connelly. You would have to remind me, I am sorry.
Mr. Smith. Sex-selection abortions act.
Mr. Connelly. Of course, I would support it, yes.
Mr. Smith. You support the act?
Mr. Connelly. Yes.
Mr. Smith. I just want to get on the record.
Mr. George. So let us be very clear. The Preconception
Prediagnostic Techniques Act. The purpose of the act is on the
act of determination, not on abortion.
Mr. Smith. Right.
Mr. George. So let us be very clear. I don't want to
mislead you. The focus of the act is on stopping determination,
because the act sees sex selection as discrimination. So we are
not dealing with abortion.
Mr. Smith. So sex-selection abortion is not proscribed in
India?
Mr. George. No, determination of the fetus.
Mr. Smith. Please, so we know absolutely. Is there a law in
India that says it is illegal to have a sex-selection abortion?
Mr. George. No. What it says, the law, PNDT Act that you
mentioned, is against discrimination. It talks about not just--
it focuses on determination of sex. So it could be the fetal
sex, it could be the embryo sex, it could be the preconception
sex. The determination, because that is--because we also have a
law [inaudible], which makes it legal, so the focus of this law
is determination. So it is not sex-selection abortion.
Ms. McElya. When you determine the sex of your child, and
then you determine that she is a female and then go have an
abortion, that is illegal because you have broken the act in
determining the sex of the child. And so, yes, I am in favor of
this act.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Dutt?
Ms. Dutt. Yes, in favor.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask Dr. Connelly: Can you expand on the
role USAID historically played in the course of population-
control programs in India? You mentioned Australia's AID agency
in your written report, what they do. What about those other
countries such as Sweden's SIDA, and maybe other countries,
too, if you want?
Mr. Connelly. USAID played an enormous role in funding
population control. In the 1970s, USAID provided more
international aid for family planning, so-called, than the rest
of the world put together.
That said, USAID, unlike, say, Sweden, for instance, and a
number of other foreign aid agencies, didn't provide money for
incentives for sterilization payments. On the other hand--now I
have got three hands--the head of the----
Mr. Smith. Dr. Connelly, on the coercive side.
Mr. Connelly. Right. On the coercive side. Well, for me,
paying poor people who are hungry for sterilization is
coercion.
Mr. Smith. We did that in India?
Mr. Connelly. No, actually USAID did not do that. They did,
on the other hand, pay for incentive payments for the providers
to carry out these procedures, which, as you can imagine, is
ripe for abuse.
Mr. Smith. Historically the rural populations and castes
targeted for population control, were the Dalits, for example,
singled out for more abusive treatment?
Mr. Connelly. That is a matter of, you know, great
controversy, continuing controversy. If you look at the
statistics, you know, from the emergency period, for instance,
it does seem that the Dalits were singled out. And, you know,
whether this is because they were often the poorest and most
disenfranchised, or whether it is because they are Dalits, that
part is not clear.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, the testimony submitted by
Mara Hvistendahl will be made a part of record. She couldn't be
here today, but wrote an extensive submission for this
subcommittee. She points out in her testimony that sex-
selective abortion following ultrasound scans is by far the
most common means of sex selection worldwide. Do you agree with
that?
Mr. Connelly. I don't know that I can verify that about the
present, but, you know, to my knowledge, that is consistent
with what I have seen.
Mr. Smith. Dr. George?
Mr. George. Yes, sir. Now if you look at--see, India is a
big country. If you look at China also, you know, there are
regional differences. So, you know, sexing started extensively
in the private sector in Punjab in 1979. So when you look at,
you know, some--many of the other parts of India, southern
India, eastern India, the sex selection started later. If you
look at my State of Kerala, even 10 years ago the rate of
ultrasound usage was the highest in pregnancy. Hardly any
misuse was being done for sex determination, but in recent
years we are seeing.
So it depends on when the sexing started, so when the
ratios fall. So therefore, it--as the whole country we cannot
see, but what I am saying is that it depends on where you are.
So if you are looking at Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, yeah, you are
right. Sex determination becomes the most important cost yet
with postchild neglect. It is much less where infanticide is
much less.
So what I am trying to say is that in 1981, I came to the
U.S. to study nutrition because we saw malnutrition of girls as
a big problem. Those days the sexing was very little, and
infanticide was very little, but today we see that as sexing
becomes more and more of the norm, then these things become
very different.
Mr. Smith. Ms. McElya?
Ms. McElya. In the studies that I have done through our
work, you can see the gender ratio dropping every 10 years in
the census. I believe in 2001, between the ages of zero and 6,
the girls were--ratio was 927 to 1,000 boys. In the 2011
census, it is 914 girls to 1,000 boys. And that is, once again,
ages of zero to 6. And through experts in this field in India,
they say that this is a direct product of sex determination
through ultrasound, and that it is becoming much more
prevalent.
Now, granted in our work we deal with a lot of people who
are very, very poor, and who cannot afford the sex-
determination test through ultrasound, and so they are still
committing infanticide, and these are people in the rural
villages in India. But when people can afford it, they will
have sex-determination tests done through ultrasound, and they
will choose to abort their children, their daughters, because
of what they have learned in ultrasound.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Dutt?
Ms. Dutt. I am afraid I really have to look at the numbers.
I mean, I am kind of lost a little bit of the track of what
was----
Mr. Smith. Her question--her declarative sentence was sex-
selective abortion following ultrasound scans is by far the
most common means of sex selection worldwide. Do you agree with
that?
Ms. Dutt. I really don't. I would really have to look at
the numbers. I don't know.
Mr. Smith. Can you do that and get back to us for the
record? That would be appreciated.
Ms. Dutt. Sure.
[The information referred to follows:]
Written Response Received from Ms. Mallika Dutt to Question Asked
During the Hearing by the Honorable Christopher H. Smith
Identifying specific means of gender-biased sex selection is
difficult because this phenomenon so often occurs outside traditional
healthcare systems and without official reporting. But additionally,
the question is flawed because it does not get at the root cause of
gender discrimination of which son preference is one example. Gender
discrimination is widespread and multi-faceted.
A complex web of socioeconomic and cultural factors results in
discrimination against girls, which manifests in sex-selective
practices. Technologies used for sex selection have compounded the
problem, not caused it. Therefore, change can only be achieved through
a broad-based, multifaceted and dedicated effort to combat the
underlying causes of son preference and gender discrimination.
In India, ultrasounds for illegally determining the sex of the
fetus are very common due to access and because the technology is
inexpensive, reaching even the most interior areas of the country.
Today in India itself there are over 1.2 million sex selective
determinations through ultrasound and other technologies resulting in
over 600,000 girls missing or prevented from being born.
On the means of gender-biased sex selection, in many places
abortion may be currently the most common form it takes, however
research indicates that son preference will persist even where access
to ultrasounds or abortion is not available. In some cases families
will resort to female infanticide or long-term oppression and neglect
of girl children.
Mr. Smith. She also points out that there has been a spike
in trafficking, prostitution and bride selling in India as an
aftereffect of sex-selection abortions and sex selection in
general. Mr. Weber just left. He wrote the law in Texas on
combating sex trafficking. My good friend and colleague Mr.
Marino enforced it as the U.S. Attorney, enforced my law,
because I wrote the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
We have tried for years to get the U.S. Department of State
to focus both on China and India, that there is a nexus between
the two. Finally this year the administration--and I credit
Luis CdeBaca for--the Ambassador-at-Large for being dogged in
trying to ensure that this connection be made. The Trafficking
in Persons Report for this year announced in June--I was at the
announcement with Secretary of State John Kerry--made it
absolutely clear that this is a major factor in what is
becoming an outrageous phenomenon of commodifying women and
selling them because there is a dearth of women. They have been
exterminated systematically through sex-selection abortion.
We have not had a corresponding acceptance of that notion
in India. And I am wondering if any of you could shed light
on--you know, as Ms. Hvistendahl points out, you know, she has
a whole section on human trafficking and points out that
India's impoverished Northeast is a common source of trafficked
women, and, of course, the lack of women, of course, leads to
more bride selling and trafficking.
Is it your view that--I am not here to talk about China,
but is it your view or would any of you like to take a stab at
the issue of trafficking, and sex-selection abortion, and sex
selection in general leading to an exacerbated situation?
Ms. Dutt. You know, I started working on the issue of
trafficking and forced prostitution in India in 1982, and I
actually did my senior thesis in college at Mount Holyoke on
the subject. And at that time there was very little attention
being placed on the issue of trafficking. And one was also
looking at the phenomenon of mail-order brides to the United
States from various Southeast Asian countries, and returning
GIs and soldiers marrying women and bringing them back.
And so, you know, my experience with the issue of
trafficking and forced prostitution goes back, obviously,
several decades, and I am not entirely sure that I would be
willing to say that there is a cause-and-effect relationship
between gender-biased sex selection and trafficking in women
and girls, because my work on that started a long time ago, and
that--the current statistics on that situation did not exist
then.
I think that the issue of gender-biased sex selection and
trafficking in women and girls are both manifestations of
gender-based discrimination, which has multiple roles, as we
have discussed earlier in the testimony. And I think to make
the connections, that sort of direct causal relationship
between gender-biased sex selection and trafficking, you know,
of course, the unequal sex ratio is leading to other kinds of
consequences, but to say that this is a consequence of that
rather than underlying patriarchy and gender-based
discrimination, I think, is incorrect.
Mr. Smith. Let me understand. You would disagree with the
U.S. Department of State's findings that it is a cause of sex
trafficking. The absence of women and the cause of their----
Ms. Dutt. I don't think it is a cause. I think that the
problem is gender-based discrimination and the objectification
of women, and the fact that men are not raised to look at women
and girls differently. I think the problem really is how men
view women, if you really want to talk about the causes of the
problems that we are facing today.
Mr. Smith. But with skewed ratios and the absence of women
to marry--and, again, both India and China have enormously
skewed ratios; others are joining those ranks, not quite as
much so--you don't believe that leads to entrepreneurs,
nefarious entrepreneurs at that, who turn women into
commodities and buy and certainly sell them?
Ms. Dutt. The trafficking industry uses whatever factors it
can. It uses poverty.
Mr. Smith. What about the dearth of women who then----
Ms. Dutt. Well, that is one of many, many factors. To say
there is a causal relationship between one and the other and to
ignore patriarchy and gender-based discrimination----
Mr. Smith. Who is ignoring? That is a strawman's argument.
I am not ignoring any other issues. What I am suggesting is
that when women don't exist because they have been
systematically exterminated through sex-selection abortion,
and, again, Ms. Hvistendahl points out that that is by far the
largest cause of the missing girls worldwide, it certainly
leads to people looking for women who don't exist, and then in
come the pimps who sell these women to the nearest buyer.
Ms. McElya, if you could speak to that.
Ms. Dutt. But the trafficking is before that.
Mr. Smith. I am out of time almost. Of course it has gotten
worse, demonstrably worse, because when I wrote that law,
finally the State Department has recognized it, and we are
hoping that they recognize it vis-a-vis India, and they have
not yet.
Ms. McElya. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
As I wrote in my statement and I touched on briefly in my
oral statement before the committee, yes, you can see a
correlation. There is--because there are 37 million men who
will never find wives, there has to be a result, and the result
is trafficking; studies show trafficking, violence against
women, marrying of child brides. The percentage of young girls
who get married in India, it is 47 percent below the age of 18
who are married off to these men because they are looking for
women to marry.
And so there is a correlation. I mean, you can't--I think
that you have to recognize that trafficking is a result of what
is going on in this discrimination against girls and women
through sex-selective abortion, through infanticide, through
feticide.
Mr. Smith. To borrow an inconvenient--or someone else's
word, it is an inconvenient truth, in my opinion. It is almost
as plain as the nose on my face that when the women don't exist
because they have been exterminated in utero, that men who are
looking for a woman, unfortunately, are more easily susceptible
to those, again, nefarious networks of pimps who sell them.
Dr. Connelly, do you want to speak on that?
Mr. Connelly. You know, one thing I know about trafficking
is that it is notoriously difficult to get accurate statistics.
One thing about sex ratios is that we have very good data. You
know, these are vital statistics, and so we can keep close
track of it and track the change over time, whereas reporting
on sex trafficking is a statistician's nightmare. So it is a
little hard, you know, to verify a causal relationship between
the two.
Mr. Smith. Well, it took the State Department a long time
on China, but they finally have come to that conclusion, and,
again, it is in their most recent report. And the Obama
administration absolutely does not agree with my view on the
sanctity of an unborn child's life, but nevertheless they came
to that conclusion that there is a nexus between the two.
I want to thank all of you for your testimony. I think it
has been a very spirited and, I think, robust discussion. It is
not the end of it. I do believe that violence against the
unborn child, or the newborn child who happens to be female, or
anyone else cries out for protection. It is human rights or
nothing if they are not for all. You know, and so again, Ms.
Dutt, I would respectfully disagree with you on your view, but
I do believe passionately that abortion is violence against
children, and it is injurious to women, and, again, it has made
this issue of missing girls demonstrably worse. And that is, I
think, a matter of statistics that are understandable.
Thank you so much for your testimony. I am going to try to
make that vote, which I might have missed. I really appreciate
your providing the insights that you have today.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
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Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submited for the record by the Honorable Ami Bera, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Material submitted for the record by Sabu George, Ph.D., independent
researcher
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