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Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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December 5, 2011

'Unwanted' Girls Defy Sexism in India

How will Americans respond to the unwanted kids in their midst?

Gina Dalfonzo

The Associated Press recently ran a deeply moving story about a name-changing ceremony in Mumbai, India. “More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean ‘unwanted’ in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life,” reports the AP’s Chaya Babu.

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The ceremony—the brainchild of a district health official—came about as a response to a crisis in India. “This year's census showed the nation's sex ratio had dropped over the past decade from 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6 to 914,” Babu writes. She goes on to explain,
Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.
Sudha Kankaria of Save Girl Child, a group that advocates for Indian girls, told Babu that being known to family, friends, and everyone else as “unwanted” makes girls “feel very bad and depressed”—and no wonder.

The fact that so many girls are killed before birth on the mere basis of their gender, and that those who do survive are often given names like “unwanted,” points to something deeply wrong with the culture’s view of women. In the renaming ceremony, the girls chose happy- or strong-sounding new names for themselves—names like Vaishali (“prosperous, beautiful, and good”) and Ashmita (“very tough”). Their choices demonstrate that this ceremony was a step toward changing that cultural paradigm—toward giving not just this one group of girls, but India itself, a fresh start.

When it comes to making children feel unwanted, though, India’s not the only country with a problem. The United States may not have as high a rate of sex-selection abortion, but unfortunately, we’ve been all too willing to fall for the lie that a child’s value is based solely on whether he or she is “wanted.” Who could forget former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders’s desire, expressed in a magazine interview, that “every child born in America” be “a planned, wanted child,” as a way to cut the rates of crime and poverty? Her interviewer clearly understood this as a reference to abortion, as her very next question concerned abortion laws.

I’ve been haunted by those words ever since I first heard them, more than a decade ago. I’ve wondered, could Elders really have realized what she was saying? On the surface, the phrase can sound good, even noble: Let’s make every child feel wanted! But the flip side of that statement is almost unfathomably cruel: If a child isn’t wanted, then he or she shouldn’t be allowed to join the rest of the human race. In the light of Elders’s pro-choice beliefs, that supposedly noble statement takes on the quality of an Orwellian nightmare.

The idea of “wantedness” vs. “unwantedness” affects me in a deeply personal way. I have an older sister who was adopted into our family at age 5. She was born to alcoholic parents in one of the poorest areas of the country, the fourth of five children who were neglected almost to the point of starvation. After that she was in and out of various foster homes, at least some of which were abusive.

I don’t know my sister’s biological family, but from the facts of her birth and early childhood, there seems no way around the hard fact that she was not what most people would call a “planned, wanted child.” It makes me feel sick to think that her life could have been snuffed out because of that—that plenty of people would have advocated such a fate for her, based solely on her biological parents’ circumstances.

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Despite the emotional baggage that she carries to this day, my sister’s life is of infinite value. She is loved and wanted now, but that’s not where her value comes from. It comes from the God who made her, who knew her from the moment of conception, and who always wanted her. And that is why she has always mattered, even before she was wanted by other people.

We have one clue that my sister’s biological parents may have recognized this fact: Despite their circumstances, they named her Joy. She kept that name when she came to us, because our parents wanted her always to have that one good thing—besides her life—that her biological parents had given her.

There’s a great deal of power in a name, as the girls of India are finding out. May those 285 girls’ new names remind them—as my sister’s name reminds everyone around her—of their worth, which no one can take away.



Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog, and author of ‘Bring Her Down’: How the American Media Tried to Destroy Sarah Palin. She wrote “What the Herman Cain Case Reveals about Harassment,” "The Good Christian Girl: A Fable,” “The Lost Virtue of Courtesy,” and “Abstinence Is Not Rocket Science” "God Loves a Good Romance" for CT online, and “Guarding Your Marriage without Dissing Women,” “Bill Maher Slurs Sarah Palin, NOW Responds,” “The Social Network’s Women Problem,” "Facebook Envy on Valentine's Day," "What Are Wedding Vows For, Anyway?" "Why Sex Ruins TV Romances," and "Don't Think Pink" for Her.meneutics.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on December 5, 2011 12:10 PM

Comments

Thank you for telling us about this Name Ceremony. Wow, what a great and hopeful story!! May God use each of those girls to change another life and on and on and on. God is there. God is here. May we remember to let all those we come into contact with know they are wanted by God (no matter what their current family situation is). Let us share the hope that is in us! merry Christmas!

Posted By: Jane Hinrichs | December 5, 2011 2:12 PM

This is a great reminder, Gina: "... but that’s not where her value comes from. It comes from the God who made her, who knew her from the moment of conception, and who always wanted her. And that is why she has always mattered, even before she was wanted by other people."

Girls (and boys) are worth being wanted because they are made in the image of God. It's that simple. Any view that even slightly denegrates truth that is contrary to God's word and, in my opinion, constitutes heresy. Also, God cares deeply about our names as seen in Isaiah 62:1-5 and Revelation 3:5 (among other passages).

Thanks for a wonderful post.

Tim

P.S. There's a great piece on the renaming ceremony over at http://www.jennyraearmstrong.com/2011/10/28/the-name-that-grace-bestows/ as well.

Posted By: Tim | December 5, 2011 2:46 PM

Gina, that was beautiful. I LOVE what you said about God always wanting her. :-) What a precious, precious truth to hold on to!

And Tim, thank you for the nod. :-) Hearing about this ceremony really impacted me.

Posted By: Jenny Rae Armstrong | December 5, 2011 6:32 PM

We are no better than India in our treatment of babies. Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave 4000 babies are aborted per day, 120,000 per month, 1.5 million per year. And those poor sweet little lambs are simply referred to as medical waste. (May God have mercy on their murderers!) And, too, may God bless the little girls in India who have chosen new names. This reminds me of Revelation. There we are told of a new heaven and a new earth. And we will have a new name and live in new Jerusalem, where we will sing a new song: God truly will have made all things new.

Posted By: Dan | December 6, 2011 7:49 PM

The most common contemporary expression of this mentality - that children shouldn't be born if they are unwanted - is the "quality of life" vocabulary so prevalent in pro-abortion rhetoric. It makes the issue sound so benign - who could possibly argue against having a good quality of life? But it seems so obvious that death is pretty much the opposite of a quality life. Likewise, I find it funny how as a society we bemoan the large number of people who resort to suicide because they feel they have no worth. Yet we actually encourage preselecting people who in our eyes are valuable, while simultaneously deselecting those we think are "unwanted." Wouldn't it be more consistent to celebrate the successful suicides of those who feel they have no value? The only corrective is to change our point of view. Only from God's vantage point does the hypocrisy of our cultural self-absorption become evident, because the ultimate value of a person is not in being wanted or valued by people, but in their true identity as bearers of the Imago Dei, and as objects of His divine love.

Posted By: jim | December 7, 2011 12:06 AM

Sad to say, this is going to be one of the least commented upon posts.

Posted By: K. | December 7, 2011 5:26 PM

That is beautiful, and may God bless each and every one of those girls.

Posted By: Lylassandra | December 8, 2011 12:42 AM

Hope this name change help these girls. But the feeling that is instilled by parents and environment of making you feel unwanted for being born a girl--can one overcome it?

Being born an unwanted girl in India is so torturous that one ends up being rebellious,depressed or you end up indulgng in things which you would not like to.

It is a sin to be born as girl here.

Posted By: Urmil | January 7, 2012 8:01 PM

Personally, I don't think there should be any child called unwanted. It has a negative impact on them, and they will hold on to that until they grow old! Let's not be surprised if an unwanted child turns out to be addicted to drugs or have committed crime after crime at a young age.

Sometimes even though you love your child, your actions may lead to him/her thinking that he/she is unwanted. Take divorce for instance. If you couple don't want to be in a relationship anymore, your children may begin to think that you don't want them too. Parents should be more sensitive about the feelings of their children.

Posted By: Katy @ marriagecounseling | February 29, 2012 11:58 AM

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