{"id":186411,"date":"2018-08-09T07:54:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T12:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=186411"},"modified":"2018-08-06T15:52:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T20:52:11","slug":"300-million-aborted-india-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/300-million-aborted-india-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"After 300 million aborted in 47 years, India still looks to increase abortions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cMan will turn into the cancer of the planet,\u201d said Julian Huxley after seeing crowds gathered on the banks of the Ganges in India. During his tenure as the Minister of Health and Family Planning in India, Chandrasekhar, an associate of Huxley and a close friend of Margaret Sanger (and a member of the British Eugenics Society), made sure to carry forward his fellow eugenicists’ dream by opening India’s doors to abortion. <\/span><\/p>\n

August 10<\/span>,<\/span> 2018, marks the 47<\/span>th<\/span> anniversary of legalized abortion in India through the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (1971). The country legalized abortion with one of the most permissive laws of the time while abortion was illegal and unthinkable for most reasons in many parts of the world. The law was passed as a result of mounting <\/span>international pressure<\/span><\/a> to control India\u2019s population. This began the carnage of unborn children through abortion in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Official” abortion numbers are grossly underestimated<\/strong><\/p>\n

The government <\/span>figures<\/span><\/a> on the number of abortions committed so far since 1971 is around 25 million. However, this figure does not represent the true<\/em> number of abortions; it only accounts for abortions committed at government-approved facilities by registered practitioners. Therefore, illegal sex-selective abortions, legal abortions committed at private hospitals, and medication abortions (RU-486) obtained over-the-counter or on the black market are not included in this data.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the year 2000, the government has been reporting that an average of 700,000 abortions were committed in registered facilities in the country annually. But several reports over the years contradict this number significantly. <\/span><\/p>\n

Since 1976, several <\/span>reports<\/span><\/a>\u00a0have claimed that 4-7 million abortions occur annually in India. Chabbra and Nuna (1994) found that an estimated 6.7 million abortions were committed in the country annually — and in 2002, the Abortion Assessment Project of India estimated an annual figure of <\/span>6.4 million<\/span><\/a>. UNICEF\u2019s report (1996) estimated 5 million annually. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, even more shocking, a recent <\/span>study<\/span><\/a> conducted by IIPS (the International Institute of Population Sciences) and the Guttmacher Institute listed the actual incidence of abortion in India for 2015 at\u00a0<\/span>15.6 million<\/span><\/a>\u00a0— a figure twenty times<\/em> higher than the government reports. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Abortion pill sales have skyrocketed<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to a report published in Lancet Global Health, in 2016, India recorded a staggering annual sale of 11 million<\/em> doses of mifepristone and misoprostol — the RU-486 abortion pill regimen. (To compare, in 2012, 7 million were sold, and in 2011, 6 million.) These packs can only be used for abortion. The Indian government has allowed the use of mifepristone and misoprostol for abortion since 2002 — and in just five years (2002 to 2007), the country saw a whopping 646% increase in the sale of abortion pills. The total market for abortion pills in India is 400 crores ($4 billion).<\/span><\/p>\n