Women's Human Rights and Migration. Sital Kalantry

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      Women’s Human Rights and Migration

      PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS

      Bert B. Lockwood, Series Editor

      A complete list of books in the series

      is available from the publisher.

      WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS

      AND MIGRATION

      Sex-Selective Abortion Laws

      in the United States and India

      Sital Kalantry

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used

      for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this

      book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written

      permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

       www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Kalantry, Sital, author.

      Title: Women’s human rights and migration : sex-selective abortion laws in the United States and India / Sital Kalantry.

      Other titles: Pennsylvania studies in human rights.

      Description: 1st ed. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017] | Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017001726 | ISBN 9780812249330 (hardcover)

      Subjects: LCSH: Abortion—Law and legislation—United States. | Abortion—Law and legislation—India. | Sex of children, Parental preferences for—United States. | Sex of children, Parental preferences for—India. | Sex preselection—Law and legislation—United States. | Sex preselection—Law and legislation—India. | Immigrants—United States—Social conditions—History—21st century.

      Classification: LCC K2000 .K35 2017 | DDC 342.5408/78—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001726.

       To my boys (Eduardo, Sidhartha, and Jai Julio)

      CONTENTS

       Preface

       Introduction

       Chapter 1. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to Cross-Border Practices

       Chapter 2. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to Sex-Selective Abortion

       Chapter 3. The Politics of Sex-Selective Abortion Laws in the United States

       Chapter 4. Sex Selection in the United States: From Gender-Biased Sex Selection to Family Balancing

       Chapter 5. Sex-Selective Abortion in India: Magnitude, Causes, and Responses

       Chapter 6. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to Sex-Selective Abortion Bans in the United States and India

       Chapter 7. Transnational Legal Feminist Approach to the French Veil Ban

       Conclusion

       Notes

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      PREFACE

      A few years ago an Indian American undergraduate student at the University of Chicago asked me to moderate a film discussion about a documentary on sex-selective abortion in India and China. The screening of the film, It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words, was sponsored by a well-regarded human rights center on campus. Before I agreed to host the film discussion, I wanted to know a little bit about the movie. Through an online search I learned that many women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, were screening the film across the country. The film was also an official selection for the Amnesty International Film Festival, and it appeared in Ms. review of feminist movies. Given the support it had from feminist organizations, I agreed to moderate the discussion even though my initial Google search did not reveal any background about the people and organizations that made the movie.

      However, when I watched the movie, I was troubled by the narrow story it told about sex selection in India. The movie began with a poor Indian woman from a village pointing to where she buried the infant girls she had killed; it depicted the violent removal of a fetus from the womb as part of a cycle of violence against Indian women; and it ended with an interview with a Caucasian American woman activist who said that she helps women in other countries because they cannot help themselves.

      The characters in this film were exactly the offensive caricatures identified by human rights scholar Makau Mutua nearly two decades ago in his critique of human rights work.1 In this movie, Indians were savages, female fetuses were victims, and Caucasian American women were saviors. Nonetheless, much like the feminists who lauded the movie across the United States, the largely pro-choice

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