“Each time she gave birth to one of her six girls, her husband made her work in the fields carrying a newborn. She wasn’t fed well, and every day a new taunt was hurled at her.” via WMC WomenUndrSiege
Indu, standing at her neighbor’s home in Sarlahi, Nepal, chose to abort her female fetus after giving birth to six daughters, even though she knew the procedure was illegal. — In the fourth month of her pregnancy, Indu found out she was carrying a girl. That night, she couldn’t sleep and kept crying. She chose to have an abortion, even though it’s illegal in Nepal to terminate a pregnancy after 12 weeks. If she were to have a seventh child, it needed to be a boy.
Abortion pilgrimages across the border are common, says Bal Krishna Shrestha, project manager for Family Planning Association of Nepal, a reproductive health services advocacy organization in the municipality of Sarlahi, in the southeastern part of the country. The Terai region adjoins the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The total fertility rate in Nepal also has fallen, from six children per woman in 1950 to less than two in 2022, according to the United Nations. The modern dowry system in South Asia, which started out with innocuous practices of gifting by well-wishers to the bride to contribute to her financial stability, has recently become a practice involving a substantial transfer of wealth from the bride’s family to the groom’s. In some cases, it has become a determinant of the value of the woman.