Girls aged between 1 and 5 years are forced to do sex change operations in India, by parents who desperately want a son, reports British newspaper Daily Mail.
Surgeons in the city of Indore perform hundreds of such sex-change operations annually, a part of the treatment consisting in administration of male hormone pills.
A report in the newspaper “Hindustan Times” describes the unprecedented fashion. Traditionally wishing to have male survivors, parents resort to various clinics and hospitals in India for the operation known as genitoplasty. Seven specialists have operated 200 to 300 girls, only one being older than 14, the legal age for such surgery.
3,250 dollars for the operation
Indian society girls are seen as a burden and they should be married as soon as possible. Sex determination tests during pregnancy are banned in India, to prevent abortions of female foetuses.
Wealthy parents go to Delhi and Mumbai, Indore, a city in central India, where they pay for surgery and treatment a relatively low price of around 3,250 euros.
Information about this alarming practice caused harsh reactions on social networks. The writer Taslima Nasreen, campaigner for women’s rights, posted a message on Twitter: “Shocking! People do not only kill unborn girls, but transform them in boys through genitoplasty. Doctors who do this should be punished with life in prison.”