The New and Angry History of Sex-Selective Abortion

AS HE walked into the maternity ward of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan Hospital in Delhi on his first day at work in 1978, Puneet Bedi, a medical student, saw a cat bound past him â??with a bloody blob dangling from its mouth.â? â??What was that thingâ??wet with blood, mangled, about the size of Bediâ??s fist?â? he remembers thinking. â??Before long it struck him. Near the bed, in a tray normally reserved for disposing of used instruments, lay a fetus of five or six months, soaking in a pool of bloodâ?¦He told a nurse, then a doctor, I saw a cat eat a fetus. Nobody on duty seemed concerned, however.â? Mara Hvistendahl, a writer at Science magazine, is profoundly concerned, both about the fact that abortion was treated so casually, and the reason. â??Why had the fetus not been disposed of more carefully? A nurseâ??s explanation came out cold. â??Because it was a girl.â?