印度父母对女童实行变性手术遭指责

Indian doctors have been accused of conducting sex change operations on young girls whose parents want son to improve the family's income prospects¹.

为求子以使家庭收入更可观，印度一些父母要求医生对女童实施变性手术，而这些医生已遭到控诉。

Madhya Pradesh state government is investigating claims that up to 300 girls were surgically² turned into boys in one city after their parents paid about £2,000 each for the operations.

Women's and children's rights campaigners denounced the practice as a "social madness" that made a "mockery（嘲弄，笑柄） of women in India".

India's gender³ balance has already been tilted⁴ in favour of boys by female foeticide（堕胎） – sex selection abortions⁵ - by families who fear the high marriage costs and dowries（嫁妆，天资） they may have to pay. There are now seven million more boys than girls aged⁶ under six in the country.

Campaigners said the use of surgery meant that girls were no longer safe even after birth.

The row emerged after newspapers disclosed children from throughout India were being operated on by doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Doctors confronted in the investigation⁷ claimed that girls with genital（生殖的） abnormalities were being sent to the city's clinics to be "surgically corrected" and that only children born with both male and female sexual characteristics were eligible⁸ for the procedure. But campaigners said the parents and doctors were misidentifying the children's conditions to turn girls into boys.

The surgery, known as genitoplasty, fashions a penis from female organs, with the child being injected with male hormones⁹ to create a boy.

Dr V P Goswami, the president of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics in Indore, described the disclosures as shocking and warned parents that the procedure would leave their child impotent and infertile¹⁰ in adulthood¹¹.

"Genitoplasty is possible on a normal baby of both the sexes but later on these organs will not grow with the hormonal¹² influence and this will lead to their infertility¹³ as well as their impotency. It is shocking news and we will be looking into it and taking corrective measures," he said.

"Parents have to consider the social as well as the psychological impact of such procedures on the child."