In India abortion practices so evil, they cause human trafficking

Indian men have a problem. They can't find women who will marry them. The problem is caused by sex-selective abortions. And as evil begets evil, many of these men are turning to bride trafficking in order to find a spouse.

NEW DELHI, INDIA (Catholic Online) - Indian culture favors male children over female so when sex-selective abortions became possible in the country, thousands, if not millions, of baby girls were aborted. This led to a sharp increase in the ratio between boys and girls in the country with some places seeing a birth rate of approximately 850 girls to 1,000 boys.

The problem became so apparent that the Indian government has outlawed sex-selective abortions, but that hasn't stopped some doctors from providing gender determination and abortions to parents who are intent on having boys instead of girls.

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Today, as the lucky boys have grown up, they have found themselves in an unlucky position. Indian society, steeped in conservative values, places a high premium on marriage. As a result, living as a bachelor isn't an option for men who want to be respected in Indian society.

To solve this problem, Indian men are turning to matchmakers who arrange marriages between men and women, typically women who come from far away. Most of these women are far from willing.

A brisk trade in human trafficking networks across Southeast Asia with young women and girls, sometimes sold, sometimes kidnapped, and occasionally just tricked, are paired with husbands living in rural districts of India.

Hope for these women is slim, and even if they could escape their condition there would be no place to go. It's a sorry state of affairs when slavery is the lesser of all other evils.

The root of this evil is abortion. The Chinese have become acutely aware of this problem too, having dealt with an imbalance in the birth ratio for decades. In the case of China, the situation was exacerbated by the national one child policy compelling parents to have abortions even against their will.

Although various agencies, both government and private, as well as a plethora of faith-based organizations are working hard to stem the tide of human trafficking across the region, their efforts will be second-hand and feeble compared to any effort to end abortion which is truly at the root of this crisis.

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