Women’s Human Rights and Migration
PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS
Bert B. Lockwood, Series Editor
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS
AND MIGRATION
Sex-Selective Abortion Laws
in the United States and India
Sital Kalantry
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kalantry, Sital, author.
Title: Women’s human rights and migration : sex-selective abortion laws in the United States and India / Sital Kalantry.
Other titles: Pennsylvania studies in human rights.
Description: 1st ed. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017] | Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017001726 | ISBN 9780812249330 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Abortion—Law and legislation—United States. | Abortion—Law and legislation—India. | Sex of children, Parental preferences for—United States. | Sex of children, Parental preferences for—India. | Sex preselection—Law and legislation—United States. | Sex preselection—Law and legislation—India. | Immigrants—United States—Social conditions—History—21st century.
Classification: LCC K2000 .K35 2017 | DDC 342.5408/78—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001726.
To my boys (Eduardo, Sidhartha, and Jai Julio)
CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to Cross-Border Practices
Chapter 2. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to Sex-Selective Abortion
Chapter 3. The Politics of Sex-Selective Abortion Laws in the United States
Chapter 4. Sex Selection in the United States: From Gender-Biased Sex Selection to Family Balancing
Chapter 5. Sex-Selective Abortion in India: Magnitude, Causes, and Responses
Chapter 7. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to the French Veil Ban
PREFACE
A few years ago an Indian American undergraduate student at the University of Chicago asked me to moderate a film discussion about a documentary on sex-selective abortion in India and China. The screening of the film, It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words, was sponsored by a well-regarded human rights center on campus. Before I agreed to host the film discussion, I wanted to know a little bit about the movie. Through an online search I learned that many women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, were screening the film across the country. The film was also an official selection for the Amnesty International Film Festival, and it appeared in Ms. review of feminist movies. Given the support it had from feminist organizations, I agreed to moderate the discussion even though my initial Google search did not reveal any background about the people and organizations that made the movie.
However, when I watched the movie, I was troubled by the narrow story it told about sex selection in India. The movie began with a poor Indian woman from a village pointing to where she buried the infant girls she had killed; it depicted the violent removal of a fetus from the womb as part of a cycle of violence against Indian women; and it ended with an interview with a Caucasian American woman activist who said that she helps women in other countries because they cannot help themselves.
The characters in this film were exactly the offensive caricatures identified by human rights scholar Makau Mutua nearly two decades ago in his critique of human rights work.1 In this movie, Indians were savages, female fetuses were victims, and Caucasian American women were saviors. Nonetheless, much like the feminists who lauded the movie across the United States, the largely pro-choice audience for whom I moderated the film discussion did not challenge the film or its message.
Through a series of interviews with policymakers, advocates, and women who sex-select, the film framed sex-selective abortion as a cycle of violence against girls and women in India. Having spent many summers in India with my grandparents, through the academic and activist work I have done in India over the last decade, and having lived there as a Fulbright scholar, I know firsthand that many women obtain sex-selective abortions because of societal norms that demand a male heir, and not as a result of overt physical or emotional coercion. There is no doubt that some of these women also face domestic violence for their failure to produce a male heir. The film, however, depicted no possibility other than violence.
Upset by the disconnect between my discomfort with the film and the general acceptance of its message by the people with whom I watched it, that very evening I stayed up late into the night trying to find out information about the filmmakers and the film’s funding sources. The film was expensive to make as it was