WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

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S. AGRAWAL - S. UNISA
socioeconomic and demographic variables. Women without any male
child are almost three times more likely to experience abortion than
women having one male child. On the other hand, women with more
female children were significantly less likely to experience abortion
than women having one female child. It is interesting to note that
women having higher autonomy were four times more likely to experience
abortion with reference to women with a lower autonomy. As
mentioned earlier, our result may be seen with caution because of the
cross sectional nature of our data and the difficulty to identify the
cause from the consequence.
Besides the gender of the children ever born and women’s autonomy
level, all other background factors were found to be less significant
with reference to abortion. However, women with a bad childhood
experience or higher level of marital instability were found to
experience abortion more often than other women in our sample.
Women who wanted to limit their family size were also more likely to
report abortion. The results of our logistic regression confirm therefore
that the presence of male children ever born is an important factor
affecting the frequency of abortion.
3.3. Case Studies
In this section, we present as illustration two case studies of
women who admitted having undergone a sex-selective abortion in
order to give a better understanding of this complex phenomenon in
the rural setting of Haryana.
The first case is a married 30-year old illiterate woman who does
not work. She was married at the age of 16 years, but started living
with her husband a year later. Her husband does agricultural work. She
has six daughters but no son. All her daughters are below the age of 12,
the youngest being 11 months at the time of interview. She had a long
series of pregnancies resulting in the birth of five daughters, but she
had an induced abortion in the sixth pregnancy. The ultrasound test
detected the presence of a female foetus and the decision to go for an
abortion was reportedly her mother-in-law’s. The gestational stage at
abortion was four months. The curettage was done in a private clinic at
the cost of Rs. 3500 (about 70 euros). Her mother-in-law accompanied
her to the clinic and also underwrote the costs of the ultrasound test
and of the curettage. She felt severe guilt after the abortion and had
this to say about her experience:
“Lagatar sat-sat betiyon ke paida hone par bahut pareshaani hoto
hai. Chhati bar safai bhi karwai thi lekin bhagwan ne satwi bar