Dead bodies of newborn infants turn up in Pakistan’s dumpsters and ditches almost every day.  Ninety-five percent of those children are girls. One organization in the country estimates that more than 1500 babies were murdered in the country last year, although the babies do not live long enough to be officially counted.

“Children born illegitimately have been killed or thrown in dustbins,” says Anwar Kasmi, from the Edhi Foundation. “In other families, maybe they can’t afford the babies. If they already have six children, and the seventh is a girl, they give her up.”

Kasmi says that dowry price and inadequate employment for women means that it generally costs families more to raise girls than boys. He also says that changes to Pakistan’s culture mean that more children are being born out of wedlock.

“We are living in a global village now,” Kasmi says. “Our young generations are watching TV programs that come from all over the world. Five years ago, there were very few cases of boys and girls running away together. Now it is much more common.”

Adoption is also an option

Last year the Edhi foundation buried the bodies of 1200 babies. The organization is taking out advertisements to encourage people not to kill their unwanted children, but rather to leave them at one of the cradles the foundation has set out around the country.

They took in 345 abandoned children last year, and found adoptive parents for most of them. Kasmi says that the boys who were left in the cradles were often sick.   “Maybe”, he says, “the parents could not afford medical care.”

The subject remains off the mainstream radar – either because of the taboos on sex, or a head-in-the-sand mentality.

Samrina Hashmi is an obstetrician in Karachi. She insists that there are no sex-selective abortions in Pakistan. She claims never to have heard of stories of murdered infants.

“I haven’t seen such a thing,” she says. “Maybe it happens in lower-middle class areas, but I’ve never heard about it.”

Infanticide in Islam

Abortion, birth control and family planning are all frowned upon in Islam. The religion’s holy writings encourage people to have children. They also explicitly discourage killing female infants. But Kasmi says there are other rules regarding illegitimate children.

“The Quran is contradictory,” he says. “We must not kill female children only if they come from a married couple. It is OK to stone illegitimate children.”

Kasmi says that moral education and higher incomes in the country are the best way to stop people from killing infants. Meanwhile, he says, Edhi will encourage parents to leave unwanted infants with the foundation, rather than in the streets.