By Sana Atef
A large number of married women in Afghanistan endure mental and physical violence by their husbands and their families for giving birth to daughters. According to the reporting by Zan Times, some mothers are reacting to such abuse by aborting female fetuses, pre-selling their unborn daughters, or abandoning those babies in hospitals after birth.
One of those women is 27-year-old Zarghuna*, a resident of Kandahar. After learning she was carrying a girl, she pre-sold the baby for 40,000 afghanis. Zarghuna, who already has seven daughters, tells Zan Times, “When I went to the hospital and found out that the fetus in my womb is a girl, I wanted to have an abortion, but the doctor prevented me.”
She knew her husband and his family would be displeased if she gave birth to another daughter, saying, “My husband’s family considers the birth of a girl to be a bad omen. They are even ashamed to show the baby girl to the guests and consider it a shame for themselves.”
Zarghuna adds that because she has not given birth yet to a son, she is always subjected to violence, insults, humiliation, and beatings by her husband and his relations. “When I got pregnant, my husband told me if you give birth to a girl this time, I will kick you and your girls out of the house,” she says. “One day, on a minor pretext, he hit me on the head with something that made me faint. When I woke up, my daughters were crying beside me.”
Zarghuna abandoned her idea of having an abortion when the doctor who performed the ultrasound that confirmed she was having a girl agreed to pay her in exchange for Zarghuna handing over her baby after it is born.
The doctor, who asked that Zan Times call her Abida*, explains her thinking: “I told Zarguna that abortion is cruelty. If you don’t want to give birth to the baby, then give it to me for money. At first, she didn’t agree, but later she was convinced to give birth to her daughter and give it to me.”
Zarghuna is one of so many women forced to marry much older men. She wed at the age of 12, and now she is subjected to torture and domestic violence when she gives birth to a girl.
Many families in Afghanistan consider the birth of a girl to be bad luck and prefer to have boys. These families usually insult, humiliate, and even torture women who they think are “daughter-laying women.”
Farida*, a 32-year-old resident of Kandahar city, is another woman who is beaten by her husband for having girls. Already a mother of four daughters and two sons, she recently left her latest child, another daughter, in the hospital and then ran away. “I can’t stand my husband’s beating anymore. I am afraid that my husband will kill my daughter,” she explains.
Shamsia*, a doctor at the central hospital in Kandahar city, confirmed this incident involving Farida, adding, “One day after the birth of her daughter, Farida left the hospital and went away. A week later, when she returned to the hospital to remove the sutures from her operation, she said, ‘I got pregnant unintentionally. When I tried to abort it, I didn’t succeed because it was too large.’”
Now, one of the hospital’s cleaning staff is taking care of Farida’s baby girl. Farida is affected by the way she abandoned her daughter, explaining, “I don’t know how to explain what I did to my daughter when she grows up and knows that her mother had to abandon her.”
Having a daughter is still considered a source of shame in many traditional families. Some people in the south and east of Afghanistan marry multiple times in order to have more sons, and in some cases even kill “daughter-laying women.” In many cases, the killing of mothers of baby girls are never disclosed to the public or the media.
Now, with women being forced out of public spaces by the Taliban, who have restricted their ability to leave their homes, the danger of giving birth to a daughter is growing behind the closed doors of their homes.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.
