Killings of newborn babies on the rise in Pakistan

[FreakinDJ]

Source: by Hasan Mansoor

Killings of newborn babies on the rise in Pakistan

KARACHI (AFP) – The lifeless bodies of two tiny babies are being given their final bath before burial in Karachi, after they were left to die in the southern Pakistani city's garbage dumps.

"They can only have been one or two days old," says volunteer worker Mohammad Saleem, pointing at the two small corpses being gently washed by his colleagues at a charity's morgue.

In the conservative Muslim nation, where the birth of children outside of marriage is condemned and adultery is a crime punishable by death under strict interpretations of Islamic law, infanticide is a crime on the rise.

More than 1,000 infants -- most of them girls -- were killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan last year according to conservative estimates by the Edhi Foundation, a charity working to reverse the grim trend.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110117/lf_afp/pakistanchildreninfanticide

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Those poor little babies!

:cry:

[woo me with science]

2. I wonder how much of this actually has to do with the massive floods,

and people now being displaced, homeless, sick, starving, and unable to support their families in winter.

I wouldn't leap first to an explanation of adultery and Islamic law.

[sledgehammer]

4. It's a bit of everything

It's very rare to have a child out of wedlock because of social/religious pressures and that definitely is a contributing factor (not so much punishment by law - it is hardly enforced, it's used more as an opportunistic tool to settle scores).

But poverty is probably a bigger factor. I'm sure many of these children are born within wedlock but the parents know they can't afford to even feed the child. There are drop-zones outside hospitals now but not everyone knows about them.

Pakistan has done a terrible job of birth control education and accessibility - cost, religious/cultural pressures, illiteracy have all played their part in this (interestingly, Bangladesh has been a success story.)

[lonestarnot]

3. Tragic.

[ladjf]

5. A terrible symptom of the deprivation syndrome. nt

[WhiteTara]

6. that's why we need international planned parenthood

this is not what mothers and fathers want to do, but the consequence of not having birth control.

I again fault/DAMN * for his meanness.

[quakerboy]

7. I do to, but I think that

You have it wrong. The reporting that they are mostly girls indicates to me that this Is exactly what someone wants. BC won't prevent only girls, so it wouldn't fix the problem there.

[jwirr]

8. It made me think of China where the boys are wanted children and

the little girls are all too often aborted. Or at least that is the way it used to be.

[WhiteTara]

9. and also in India.

[Odin2005]

10. There is an economic preference to not want girls because of dowries.

[jwirr]

12. Yeah I do not think it is true discrimination as much as it is economic.

It is not just the idea that daddy wants a little boy.

[midnight]

11. God bless the Edhi Foundation. Here is a little bit of info about the Edhi Foundation:

Donations from the government, religious organisations and relief agencies are not accepted. Abdul Sattar Edhi firmly believes that since the Foundation's work is for the" Awam " (Masses) ,the Awam should contribute towards its operations. Through this principle of self- reliance, he wishes to inspire the masses for welfare projects. Aid from government and foreign agencies, in Edhi's view, leads to undesirable interference and creates administrative bottlenecks in the organisation's work.http://www.edhifoundation.com/edhi-donations.asp