The Daughter Tree: The midwife fighting for baby girls in India | Abortion | Al Jazeera
Neelam Bala is a fearless local midwife and activist in India's northern state of Punjab, where she works to challenge practices that value a girl's life as worth less than a boy's.
India has over 50 million more males than females, according to United Nations estimates. Even though ultrasound sex-determination is illegal in India, the country has one of the highest rates of female foeticide in the world. Millions of baby girls have been aborted in the past three decades.
In her community, Neelam insists that parents appreciate their baby no matter the gender, and she is happy whenever she can safely deliver a baby girl. But she faces pushback from men and women who see girls as a bu
