Slaying of the First Born: Killing of First Born Girls & Violence Against Women
This is a work in progress. It makes me very depressed. There are a lot of Hebrew letters to construct, and then I am cutting out images of girls and women. They are symbolic of the killing of first born girls and violence against women.
The Idea Behind
In many Asian countries, girl children and female babies are unwanted. This is for many reasons in Asian culture. The firstborn boy child is supposed to take care of parents in old age. In addition, girl children are not as highly valued as there may be a bride price or dowry which can be financially devastating.
In India, killing female babies is utero is illegal, but still done. Girl babies are drowned in milk (after they are born) as a sacred death. Or another way to kill infant girls is feed them a raw grain of rice which damages their intestinal tract. Another less graphic death sentence for female children is neglect that may include not feeding them enough food, or neglecting to give them childhood vaccinations. Yes, this is all horrific and true.
Violence against women in a problem worldwide. 140 women and girls on average were killed by a loved one every day last year, UN finds. This happens in all cultures, but a hidden secret in the United States. “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.” And they said, “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”
Shocking facts
In India, girl babies are killed in the following ways:
Lacing their feed with pesticides
Forcing grains of poppy seed or rice husk down their throats
Stuffing their mouth with black salt or urea
Starving them to death
Suffocating them with a wet towel or a bag of sand
No or Never months of breast feeding
Rubbing poison on the mother's breast, so that the baby is poisoned as she nurses
Leaving the baby die in the fields
Burying the child alive
According to Witnesses
"She was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs that ate her. Her only fault - she was the fourth girl born in a poor family," said Harshinder Kaur, pediatric doctor here, recalling the first time she witnessed discrimination against female infants in Punjab's rural side. (Hindu- April 16, 2013)
"Earlier this year in the southern India state of Andhra Pradesh, farmer Ram Kumar made a shocking discovery. Sticking out of the earth was a tiny human hand. Barely audible, were the cries of a newborn baby. There was a girl wrapped in a cloth and buried deep in the ground", said Ram Kumar.
