Now Baby Girls Not Buried Alive, but Only Killed Before Birth

The UN Office in Azerbaijan invited Baku bloggers to discuss the problem of spreading selective abortions in the country and motivate bloggers to propagate negative attitudes towards selective destruction of unborn babies among the population.

Pre-Islamic times, when live baby girls were buried in the ground, are long gone. But the Azerbaijani folk saying "Yeddi Oğul Istərəm, Bircə Dənə Gız Gəlin (I Wish Seven Sons and Just One Girl - Bride-to-Be)", as well as semantic names such as Gızbəsti (Enough Girls), show that it has been customary for our people from the earliest to wish the birth of boys, not girls. A man in the family was perceived as a breadwinner, and a girl was a burden, as parents all their life collected her dowry for marriage, and when she married, she became an employee of another family. Unfortunately, these ugly views still exist, especially in rural areas.

It came to the point that today Azerbaijan is the second country in the world in terms of the number of selective abortions per capita. The first is China, where the tradition of abortion was introduced by the communist authorities, which forbids families to have more than one child. This law has been repealed, but the Chinese tradition to intervene in the natural birth of children has remained. At the second place in the number of selective abortions in the world is Azerbaijan (115.6 boys for every hundred girls), and at the third is Armenia (114 boys for every one hundred girls), and the same ugly tradition exists in Georgia.

The statistical difference between Azerbaijan and Armenia is symbolic and very small. More importantly, in the Azerbaijani parliament, the law prohibiting selective abortions was adopted more than five years later than in Armenia. Consequently, conditions for selective destruction of the fetus persisted for us longer, and this directly affects the demographic imbalance in Azerbaijan.

In the Azerbaijani law "On Reproductive Health" there is a separate article devoted to selective abortions and prohibiting the conduct of an ultrasound scan to determine the sex of the child. The exception is cases where such an examination or an abortion is necessary for medical reasons (genetic diseases of parents, etc.). If the possible danger of the birth of a boy or girl with certain genetic abnormalities threatening them with serious illness or death is definitely proved, or if there is a threat to the life of the baby"s mother, then medical abortion is permitted.

Punishment for violation of the law is appointed depending on the severity of the crime committed: from administrative to criminal. The doctor who violates the law can be either suspended from further activity, or arrested, MP Musa Guliyev explained to journalists.

But the fact is that the existence of the law does not solve the problem. All laws are violated, or loopholes in legislation are revealed. In India and China, there is a ban on abortion on the basis of sex, and doctors under threat of arrest and imprisonment are forbidden to inform the parents of the future child's sex, but selective abortions are common there. To ensure that the Azerbaijanis do not make any distinction between boys and girls, daily intensive educational work is needed. Judging by the fact that our country occupies the second shameful place in the world, this problem worries the UN, and not Baku, where there is no such propaganda. On the walls of our buses or in the subway there are no posters calling on young parents to give birth to girls with the same eagerness as boys.

If the disgust of selective abortions were discussed on TV channels, at least three times less than the observed political propaganda, this could be enough for a significant shift in solving an important social problem. In schools and medical institutions, explanations for the immorality of selective abortions should be carried out in a planned manner. Social advertising on city streets, especially in rural areas, where the mentality of the population is particularly in need of education, is necessary. Even social storylines in Azerbaijani television soap operas are effective, in which parents could discuss the necessity of aborting a fetus of a female kind, and then come to the opinion of the sinfulness of such an act. But we do not observe any of the above in Azerbaijan.

The chief adviser of the United Nations Population Fund in Azerbaijan Farid Babayev warns that if the situation does not start to change, gender imbalance can turn into a real demographic catastrophe. Experts believe that if Azerbaijan does not take appropriate measures, in 20-30 years the demographic situation in the country can seriously change. The ratio between male and female sex can be so great that it will negatively affect the birth rate in the country.