Saving India's Girls

Ashley K. Fernandes, an assistant professor of pediatrics and community health, has an opinion piece in the May issue of First Things commenting on India's recently-announced plans to open orphanages to take in and raise unwanted baby girls.  He explains:  "While both India and the world acknowledge that sex selection is a crisis of epic proportions, one that has already seriously tipped the gender balance to favor boys, the laws to ban the practice in India have so far been ineffective."

What I found almost breathtakingly refreshing about the article was the fearlessness with which the Indian government deals with those who would question the cost-effectiveness, the economic efficiency of this plan:

India’s orphanage plan is called the cradle scheme. According to Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, it has already been funded in the coming national budget. Precise figures on cost and a time frame for set-up are lacking; nevertheless, it is a beautiful example of how—in a world that prizes stark efficiency, the supremacy of personal autonomy, and the purported “rationality 
of utilitarianism”—a country of a billion people can take a collective stand to protect the most vulnerable in its midst. India is by no means perfect; Chowdhury herself, obsessed with population control, once sought to ban women and men with more than two children from contesting Parliamentary and state elections. There are many more in India who see abortion as a solution to the country’s stifling population problem. But it nonetheless seems a significant step in the right direction.

The article quoted Chowdhury: “What we are saying to the people is have your children, don’t kill them. And if you don’t want a girl child, leave her to us.” When asked if setting up such a system of orphanages might encourage even more abandonment of baby girls, the minister replied: “It doesn’t matter. It is better than killing them.”

Although even pro-abortion academics and politicians in the United States would likely condemn sex-selective abortion as morally impermissible (although it is hard to see on what grounds, if abortion is a fundamental right), skeptics and cynics will still say that the cradle scheme is too ambitious, too optimistic, and too inefficient. Who will pay for all these children? Should a developing country waste its resources on babies who are unwanted anyway? What will be the social impact of hundreds of thousands of girls brought up by the state?

India has its simple answer: We don’t know. We don’t know for how long and how much we will be able to pay for this program (but we are committed to trying); we don’t know the impact of spending resources on unwanted babies (but we know it is not a waste); we don’t know the social implications of girls growing up under the care of Mother India (but it is better than killing them). India’s plan is a model of inefficiency—and simultaneously a valiant stand for the value of human life. . . . But the cradle scheme is an inefficiency in which we—and all humanity—can rejoice. It is an inefficiency for justice, an inefficiency for the sake of another.