14. A number with multiple applications. 14 dollars, 14 cents, 14 years, 14 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes, 14 seconds. To me, 14 represents the number of miscarriages my mother had before she had her first child, a healthy baby girl. Me. My parents wept that day — they were overcome with tears of joy. Unfortunately, at that very moment, somewhere in India, another family was shedding tears of sorrow for the exact same reason.
In India, son preference is a pressing issue. Every day a mother is forced to or willingly aborts her child upon finding out that she is pregnant with a baby girl. 
If not aborted, newborn girls are abandoned or killed at birth. This disgusting decades old trend has also led to several social imbalances in India. Men in villages are growing up and looking to get married, only to find that there aren’t enough women available. This has created a ‘market’ in which girls are treated as a commodity. They are bought from other villages and sometimes even forced into being co-wives to brothers of the family that buys them. Women are often abused and sometimes even killed in such households. However, this issue isn’t limited to the villages, it exists even among India’s elite. In fact, so much so that the ratio of girls in urban India is actually less than rural. So, does female foeticide and infanticide stem from cultural traditions or lacked education? Looks like India’s default scapegoats – the uneducated villagers — aren’t to blame when the facts are staring us in the eyes.
The creator of Petals in the Dust: India’s Missing Girls, Nyna Pais Caputi, decided it was time to spread awareness about India’s lost girls when she herself attempted to adopt an Indian baby girl –
We were surprised to learn that there were very few female infants available for adoption. When we dug deeper, we found statistics that seemed to explain these missing baby girls – one out of every six girls does not live to see her 15th birthday, one-third of these deaths take placeat birth every sixth girl child’s death is due to gender discrimination.
Her film uncovers the systematic massacre of girls in India and the impact it has had on India’s current population. It explores “the reasons behind the origins of this gender bias, why it is still so prevelant and its consequences.” While documenting the experiences of women throughout India’s economic scale, it brings to light the reality of the issue: the killings of baby girls is not that of a certain type of people — in fact, it has no boundaries on the basis of cast, creed, economic stature, etc. By taking the film’s message of spreading awareness and putting it into action, a walk was organized in San Francisco, California on Saturday, September 15th, 2012. It began at City Hall and ended in Union Square. Women, men and children of all backgrounds came together to shed light on the issue and made signs that turned several heads — showing that this seemingly “third world” problem is, in fact, a global issue. As a global community, we have come together and connected in so many different ways — may it be business or leadership. It is time we utilize this connectivity stand together as a global community against the killings of our sisters across India.
Female infanticide and foeticide can be stopped through widespread awareness and national regulations. We must join hands, in more than just prayer, to save the missing girls of India and put an end to this genocide. I was lucky to be born into a family that accepts me regardless of my sex, but many of my sisters in India aren’t. It’s time for their luck to turn around because at the end of the day, every life should be valued, be it female or male.
Fresh & Fearless.