Pakistan, Oct. 1 -- A man in Gujranwala has been arrested after allegedly beating his pregnant wife because she refused to abort their second daughter. According to the FIR, the woman was pressured to terminate the pregnancy after an ultrasound indicated that the child was female. That we are living in 2026 did little to change her supposed offence of carrying another girl.

There is something particularly disturbing about violence that begins before the child at its centre has even been born. It also exposes the absurdity that women continue to be blamed for producing daughters when it is the father's chromosome that determines a child's sex. Yet lack of scientific knowledge explains only so much. The uglier problem is that, in too many ...