Dangerous Decline By a conservative estimate, female foeticide accounts for at least half a million missing female births in India every year, according to research findings published in British Medical journal Lancet. The Lancet Report 2011 estimates that more than 12 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India in the last three decades. India was recently ranked as the fourth worst country in the world for the safety and wellbeing of women, citing the high rates of child marriage, trafficking, slavery, female feticide, and female infanticide as contributing factors. Even when a female child manages to survive past the first year of her life, she often suffers “systematic neglect, inferior medical care, poor nutrition, and substandard education” compared to her male counterparts. Girl babies are “breast-fed less frequently” and for a “shorter duration” than baby boys, and receive little to no medical care. 71 percent of young females experience severe malnutrit