women after Islam was revealed, which is proven
by the many verses guaranteeing women’s rights.
Islam’s most fundamental guarantee of women’s
rights is simply the right to live. Islam then calls on
parents to treat both male and female children with
kindness, thereby making gender equality central
to its message. Islam, they argue, clearly protects
the rights of women but also the disadvantaged
such as orphans, the infirm, and the aged, indicat-
ing that its goal is to secure social justice for all.
Nevertheless, the Qur±àn and ™adìthdo not deter-
mine behavior as much as interact with local cus-
tom, family honor, and economic need to produce
guidelines, which vary enormously from region to
region. In some regions mothers may decide to
commit infanticide or abandon a newborn child
when an older child is still nursing. The mother
knows that the older child will die without ade-
quate nutrition and if the older child is healthy and
male and if the newborn is female or perhaps hand-
icapped or sickly, the latter may be killed or aban-
doned. This is considered regrettable but not a
crime. The real crime, of course, is the global and
regional economic inequality that forces families to
make such unhappy choices.
In recent years, new reproductive technologies
such as ultrasound and amniocentesis procedures
have enabled prospective parents to determine the
sex of the unborn and this has led to the intentional
abortion of female fetuses and to the prevalence of
male infants in certain regions and social strata in
India, China, and many other societies. Worldwide,
at least 80 million girls who would otherwise be
expected to be alive are “missing,” as a result of
sex-selective abortions, infanticide, or neglect.
Islamic authorities have viewed the new repro-
ductive technologies with favor only if the purpose
is to enable an infertile couple to have children. The
use of egg or sperm donors is generally frowned
upon because it tampers with family lineage. While
opinions vary on the legality of abortion for the
purpose of family planning, abortions for the pur-
pose of sex selection are not approved.
Despite the views of the religious authorities,
many women are caught in a dilemma. They must
produce sons or risk social censure and abandon-
ment. The woman who successfully produces sons
for her husband’s family can expect to gain marital
stability, higher social status, greater authority
within the family, and material rewards. Often a
young woman will accept a low status within her
marriage in the expectation of a higher status at a
more senior age. It is a means of self-preservation in
families and societies constrained by patriarchal
customs. The woman has been socialized to under-
overview 297stand that rebelling may mean the end of her mar-
riage, loss of status, and economic loss not only for
herself but also for her kinship network. While the
stable nuclear or extended family remains the basis
of Muslim society in theory, the reality for many
women is very different. Divorce, the former hus-
band’s failure to pay alimony and child support,
and outright abandonment confront many women.
Such fears may make sex-selected abortion the best
course of action for individual and family survival.
Some women also state that they do not wish to
bring daughters into a social context in which they
are not wanted. Such women, and indeed their fam-
ilies, should not be condemned, for they are trying
to advance their mutual or divergent interests in a
discriminatory and difficult environment.
In Pakistan, women activists have been ex-
ceptionally visible in campaigning against sex-
selective reproductive practices. In utero diagnosis
has enabled physicians to identify hundreds of dis-
eases at an early stage of pregnancy, but the valu-
able medical procedure can easily be misused.
Ultrasound is more often than not used to deter-
mine the sex of the fetus and female fetuses are
aborted not only by impoverished women but also
by women in the middle and upper classes who find
it in their interests to bear male children. Such
women and their marital families covet the prestige
associated with producing male children and social
pressure can be considerable. Pakistani medical
personnel increasingly refuse to disclose the sex of
the fetus because of the prevalence of sex selection,
but prospective parents may then seek another
more cooperative medical care provider. The result
is a disproportionate number of male infants and
perhaps 3.1 million missing females in Pakistan.
Neglect of female infants may be more common
than infanticide or sex-selected abortion in some
areas. In Egypt, more than 600,000 females are
missing from the Egyptian population, thereby
skewing the expected male:female sex ratio.
Impoverished parents give inferior food and med-
ical care to the less valued female infants and
children who may then succumb to respiratory
infections, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Researchers
in Egypt conducted a national survey, which
showed that while infant mortality was lower for
females for the first month after birth, it rose rap-
idly after the neonatal period, indicating parental
or care-giver neglect. To date there are few statisti-
cal surveys on the neglect of female infants else-
where, though indications are that the practice is
far from rare in impoverished regions.
In Sudan, female or male infanticide is illegal and
rare but is considered less shameful than is pregnancy