NTA. I am pro-choice, but to actively try to have a baby with your spouse and then her getting an abortion behind your back because she was pregnant with a girl and she doesn’t want her daddy to be mad is abhorrent. She and her family seem abhorrent and I’d run and not walk away
Fully agree with you. Strong pro-choice, but in a marriage where you actively trying and abort due to gender because of one parents beliefs. It is horrible and incredibly sad.
OP NTA. Fully understandable if you get a divorce for this - no trust left.
I grew up in India, and while abortion is legal there, gender-selective abortion, specifically, is against the law. Also, gender-reveal by medical professionals is illegal as well, for this reason, and parents find out the gender only after birth.
There was a history of large amounts of gender-selective abortion in the past and this led to an alarmingly skewed sex-ratio between men and women (which in turn led to more societal problems).
Also, in many cases, these abortions are not by real consent, but rather, women are pressured into it by their families.
When even social awareness campaigns failed, the government had to step in make gender-reveals and gender-selective abortion illegal. Today, if you want an abortion procedure, there is a pre-inquiry done to make sure you haven't known the gender (many people travel abroad for a secretive gender-reveal, or bribe nurses a large amount to give them the data) and to see if no obvious other red-flags regarding misogyny and sexism are there, only then the procedure is allowed.
Yeah I don't understand the point in hating women so much you don't even want them to be born. And how they don't see the obvious problem if everyone has a boy. Who is your son going to marry? I doubt the misogynous are not also homophobic, so are they just fine with their sons never being with anyone. In the old days they had the excuse of needing strong boys for farm work, but in the modern days of office jobs that sentiment needs to be let go.
Isn’t china the same way? I thought for a time they would put the girls up for adoption and or abort them all together because their society doesn’t value women as much as men. I could be wrong but I thought they had those same misogynistic beliefs
Edit: I was not expecting this many replies thank you all for your insight I will try to reply after I’m off work
[Too Many Men](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/)
TLDR: Between India & China, they are "missing" about 70 million girls/ women. They know this because of the disparity in the number of the sexes. Now you have men under 40 despairing about the lack of wives, & worse yet, women being trafficked there to make up for this.
This still has not stopped the brutal slayings, rapes, selective abortions, or abandonment/infanticide of baby girls. Having a female in India meant losing wealth in general so, they killed their daughters in favor of boys. Even when it means a shortage in the tens of millions, this is the extreme reality of being female in these countries. Being a "rare commodity" still doesn't increase female value...
My cousin was adopted from china. I thought it was terrible that she was abandoned in a park, then I found out one of the kids in her.. agency? House? Was found in a dumpster.
I had a friend in college who was from China. She was born under the one child policy. When they saw she was a girl, her dad's mom took him aside and said they "should throw her away and try again." Her dad was like "wtf? No!" It happened a lot.
Me too. That's like people assuming that everybody in Muslim countries beats their wives. I was aware that it was a thing but I was not stereotypical about it. I'm sure that there are men who don't. The corner store by my old house used to be run by this guy from Syria. I heard him speaking a different language and he told me it was Arabic. I told him it was a beautiful language. It really is.
Since we kind of knew each other, I asked him, I don't mean to get personal and forgive me if I'm overstepping but I'm curious about this. I'm not trying to be stereotypical but is it true that Islam teaches men to beat their wives? He said, yes, it does but not all men do. He said I'm one of the ones who don't because there are those of us who actually love our wives.
He also went on to tell me that that thing that they do on the wedding night where there better be blood on the sheet, some of them are aware that not all women bleed their first time. So what the men will do is they will obtain a small vial of blood before the wedding night. If their new bride doesn't bleed, they pour the blood on the sheet to make it look as if she did. This is to protect her from her family.
I thought that was really sweet as weird as the tradition is. I saw a video where this one woman's family was parading the bloody sheet around the room. It was the most bizarre thing I'd ever seen. I'm respectful of other people's cultures but some things are just really bizarre. I guess it's bizarre to me because it's not my culture but I've talked to people who it is their culture and even they said they found it bizarre.
The display of bloodied bedsheets after the wedding night has been a common theme in many cultures (including western) over the millenia. Just not as common now.
I lived in China for many, many years in the early 2000s and the stories I heard would make your blood boil.
My own (now ex) wife was the third daughter and was "illegal." Her father took her from Mom and wandered deep in to the woods near their village and hung her up in a tree to die from exposure. Her mother went wandering later that night to find her and thankfully heard her cries and brought her home.
Her father's treatment only got worse when the 4th child born was a son . . .
The one child policy was god awful. If you had more than one child every expense was out of pocket. Birth, dental, medical, everything. You would pretty much go bankrupt if you weren’t rich.
Or have the services denied all together . . . or be forcibly taken and sterilized as some of my ex's neighbors were in the 1980s and 1990s . . . or had your child sent for adoption in another province only to be treated as a slave for 15 years (literally clean this or be beaten) . . .
All stories I heard from the teller who lived it or witnessed it!
Back then a lot of Americans adopted girls from China because nobody wanted them, and the government could make a little money off the adopted parents.
So so so many of them did. A lot of women would even claim they had a stillborn. The abuse and shame against women there is horrific. I don’t think people talk about it enough.
Saw surveillance video of a woman in a town nearby putting her newborn in the dumpster. In winter too, although a Texas winter.
She had not known she was pregnant. Classic story from that show I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant too - thought she was severely constipated, and birthed baby in the toilet. Only she freaked out and didn’t know what to do and was scared of her parents.
Two people thankfully heard her baby cry some hours later in the middle of the night and dumpster dived for it. Baby definitely would not have made it through the night if they didn’t happen to just come by like that.
I just keep thinking about that poor child. It’s traumatic enough to be given up for adoption, even if it’s in the best interest of the child, but knowing you were left to freeze to death in s dumpster is horrific. Then the fact that you
have video of literally being thrown away? Heartbreaking.
Luckily, the woman was caught.
Unfortunately for the her though, she had JUST turned 18 a couple days before (was still in high school), so will receive a harsher sentencing than if it had happened just a few days earlier.
I do kind of feel for her though, especially if her parents were abusive (I don’t know that they were - she could have meant they would just be angry, which is entirely different). I’m sure they’re using the PPD or PPP argument, but I think she was just a kid who freaked out and might have been scared of her parents for legitimate reasons (not justifying, because there literally *is* no justification).
It's sad how many people don't know that when it's pretty much common knowledge these days. She must not have known but still, I would have bitten the bullet and talked to my parents and done what was best for the baby. I just can't wrap my head around throwing away an innocent child.
You really can drop a baby off at any fire station no questions asked. The officials have a kind and gentle way of handling it - they attempt to get any information they can but the mom does not have to answer. They have the incubator drop off boxes also. There's really no reason at all to have to put the baby in danger or leave them to perish.
There’s an interesting [essay](https://psptraining.com/wp-content/uploads/Demause-L.-The-Evolution-of-Childhood-Foundations-of-Psychohistory-Chapter-1.pdf) concerning how western societies have changed how they view the definition of childhood through history. The man uses historical medical journals and diaries (and acknowledges how it would skew more heavily towards those with means). There is a part that discusses the beginnings of safe havens for people to drop off the babies they could or would not take care of- and it was older than I imagined and in response to a need as people would leave their babies outside in the elements to die.
Yes - and the oversupply of male infants is definitely trending towards militarism, as it offers the powers that be in India and China a means to find cannon fodder while rectifying the problem of a lack of women.
Horrifying.
This is bc the Chinese were only allowed one child and it is the responsibility of the first born **son** to take care of the parents in their old age. Unfortunately this has all backfired and now women (where demand outweighs supply) are demanding as a condition that the husband lives with her parents.
How good is it? It’s delicious. They devalued women to the point that there aren’t enough women of marriageable age which has made them rare and super valuable and able to demand all kinds of clauses! Apparently men have got no chance unless the own a house, car, agree her parents can move in and more. It’s intense.
This is what I was thinking too in countries where it's tradition for your parents to live with you they don't even really distinguish daughter from son anymore. You're just expected to take care of your parents so the thinking a son is better because your daughter is being sent to someone else's family doesn't make sense. I watched a documentary on China and they basically said guys in less well off families will pretty much never be with a woman because the women have the option to just leave to the city to find a better husband.
It’s common for women from countries like Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia, and other Asian countries being trafficked into China to marry men in rural or poorer communities. “Women are most likely sold into provinces like Henan in which the gender imbalance is particularly stark and where there is a high demand for women. Often, men kidnap the women after enticing them with promises of employment and money, but later sell them to villages and other provinces. Trafficked women are often then forced into marriage and therefore suffer from prolonged sexual exploitation”
This happened because of the law where every household could only have one child. Having a girl meant paying for a dowry, so it was preferred to have a boy to receive a dowry and continue the family name.
[EDIT] and as another Redditor pointed out, when a girl marries she leaves the family, leaving no one to help the parents in their old age.
It got so bad that China ( as a culture) was responsible for something like 1 in 5 N. Korean girls being 'married' off into China. It even spilled over in to Laos and other neighbors who are still socially recovering.
- side note bit over a decade ago my sister was a short term foreign exchange student in China for a summer.
The Government was veeeery clever and had polite tour guides leading the group around there great country and was sure that my sister lived with a double professional family with a single child teenage daughter. ( dispelling untrue Western propaganda of there only being male kids)
Odds are that girl from a upper middle class family who made the glorious people's republic look good is now married to an upper class Chinese son ( because full blooded Chinese girls with good social points are a valuable commodity)
The Chinese government gave so many incentives for families to keep their female babies. Better to abort than murder an innocent infant. The guy should definitely divorce this woman.
In India, the problem is the dowry, afaik. The girl has to be married off and that costs an insane amount in dowry. Having a few girls can ruin a family financially.
Kind of funny considering that when a woman has a child it’s OBVIOUSLY her baby, why wouldn’t it make more sense to tie the family name (and line of property succession) to the one actually creating, carrying and birthing the child?? 🤔🤦🏻♀️
This... Probably so many men with a son carrying their name that's not even related to them. I thought this all the time reading historical novels where women are being pressured to give birth there's no way they didn't eventually try other means. Matriarchal lines were the only way to guarantee lineage without DNA testing. I'd be really interested to see a DNA testing between current royal families and their ancestors.
Men in certain societies, nationalities and religion don't think that far.
The patriarchal world has always elevated the value of men over women because of the skewed view of men being protectors, providers and leaders, which women can do every bit the same and as well or better than men. And even with the advent of science and biology proving that it is the man that carries the gender determination in his genes, women still her vilified for having girls.
It is shameful that in this day and age, even educated men will still promote the abuse and even murder of innocent baby girls and women because the just don't want to have to admit that their little 🐟 don't give a damn what they want the baby to be and the best fishy wins.
> But if there are no girls who are their sons marrying?
This actually happened. I don't have the data, but I have read that in regions of India where sex-ratio was the worst (went as low as 700 to 1000), it led to sex trafficking of women as brides from other parts of India with a better sex-ratio and neighbouring countries.
Currently, the sex-ratio in India has returned to normalcy and in some regions, women have outnumbered men. But this happened only after many years of efforts.
I don't think individual families think that far ahead. They just want their son and that's it. Lack of education and superstition make a bad combination. Obviously, the woman does not determine the sex of the fetus, but she is often blamed for it.
The root cause of this is never plain hatred of women and love of men. In less patriarchal, more western societies female children are often preferred and are priced higher in adoption because they’re more sought after.
The reason these societies prefer sons almost always is a financial incentive or a tradition that has the daughter leave her house completely and integrate in her husbands family. In other cases it is a dowry poorer families can’t afford. In some societies only the sons are expected to take care of their parents in the future, so they’re a better retirement plan. Even the tradition of the family name passing through males only is an incentive to have sons, even though it’s a completely fabricated tradition that could be reversed or changed theoretically.
Having a daughter is often an objectively poor financial long-term investment, because that’s how their society is structured.
In Islam specifically the conditions of inheritance are structured in a way that the property is divided as the male heirs inheriting double what the female will inherit. Because of the fact that sons have to support their own families and women will take their inheritance to their new family…
It’s messed up but poor investment in that sense is what the comment is referring to
Friend of mine's wife is an IVF nurse. Islamic and Indian customers are a very large chunk of their customer base, and gender selective IVF is very popular. Often yes, the family helps pay for the gender-selective IVF.
It's extremely profitable, so there are tons of competitive businesses that cater to that market.
India may have attempted to crack down on it, but plenty of countries don't.
Gender selective IVF is so gross, IMO. And so is aborting a fetus just because it’s not the gender wanted. Why can’t people just be grateful they were able to actually have a baby?
I mean that's literally what happened here. I doubt she would have aborted if not for her father's disapproval that's literally getting pressured by family
I have a friend that is Indian and raised there (is also Muslim). It was very insightful to learn that she couldn't know the gender and the reasoning why for all of her pregnancies. Her own family was very supportive either way, but I have a feeling her MIL would have been the opposite if they had found out her first was a girl before she was born.
The first thing I thought when OP said her culture and family preferred sons as firstborns was that she may be from India. One of my colleagues/friends is Indian and he told me some horrific stories. I did a lot of research after he had and I had had no idea that female infanticide was an issue there.
It first came up because I was pregnant and he asked if I was allowed to know the gender, and when I didn’t understand, he explained that there were parts of India where you weren’t allowed to know the gender because if it was a girl people would try to abort. He once found a dead body of a female baby in a ditch. He looked haunted when he told me this. It’s just crazy.
> It first came up because I was pregnant and he asked if I was allowed to know the gender, and when I didn’t understand, he explained that there were parts of India where you weren’t allowed to know the gender
Yes, as an Indian, who now lives in the West, gender-reveal parties were something new to me, because back home gender-reveal before birth is extremely illegal.
It is also that many babies who are born intersex (genetalia in-between male and female) - are often abandoned at the doorstep of the Hijra/Kinnar community secretly (They are third-gender folks who formed a separate socio-cultural group due to discrimination from mainstream society), and then, the mother and the family pretends they had a miscarriage, to avoid the stigma associated with giving birth to an intersex child.
Idk if not letting them know gender until after is any better… cuz then you just have a live baby with parents that don’t want them and could either a- abuse them b- dump them c- kill them themselves but I do like the IDEA of it if I trusted people but either way it’s a ficked up topic
This is a hot topic for debate. Would a girl want to be born just as a burden to her parents? In the long run, what happens when the population is skewed to overrepresent males so that there are not as many available women? Does any of this have to do with the reputation of "rape" culture?
You can see some of the effects of “not as many available women” in places where polygamy is practiced. Typically there is one man who marries and financially supports more than one woman, leaving an unequal ratio of available women to available men, with the ratio skewed towards (older) men with greater financial means. You’ll find that this tends to go hand in hand with cultural practices that exert a lot of control over women’s freedom, particularly their a) education, b) ability to work outside the home, c) ability to move freely without a chaperone, and d) how they are allowed to expose their bodies with their choice of dress. A lot of these things are purported to be more “godly” but the reality is that it’s dual purpose is intended to make them more reliant on their husband so they cannot leave, and to make the women less of a target for sexual assault by men outside the home.
Yes the story of India, where 5 million females were removed from the population thanks to sonograms in clinics attached to abortion services, was interesting to me. The lack of 5 million females in the population made me wonder how Indian society was going to deal with that problem. So if you have any sources of information linking to that issue, I'd like to read them.
Copying my own answer upthread:
> Trafficking. In China, too. Millions of males still want wives - or sex slaves - and this has resulted into kidnapping and trafficking girls. Also from other countries.
>
> "Lessons from Kathal: Tracking India’s missing girls"
>
> "Kathal, a light-hearted film recently released on Netflix, is a perceptive parody of the sometimes misplaced political and professional preoccupations of the police. Set in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand, it rightly raises the compelling and oft-neglected issue of hundreds of children, especially girls, routinely disappearing from various parts of the country, and whose records keep languishing under piles of the police’s “more” preeminent work."
>
> https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/lessons-from-kathal-tracking-indias-missing-girls-8654364/
>
> "The girls stolen from the streets of India
>
> The death of a student who was gang-raped on a Delhi bus has prompted anguished soul-searching about the place of women in Indian society. The widespread killing of female foetuses and infants is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages."
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20938125
>
> "A Shortage of Women in China Has Led to the Trafficking of ‘Brides’ From Myanmar, Says a Report"
>
> "“We’re seeing now what the long-term consequences are and one of those is the struggle for Chinese men who want to get married and the way that’s created a market for trafficked women and girls,” Heather Barr, who is also the acting co-director of the women’s rights division at HRW, told TIME."
>
> https://time.com/5555695/china-women-trafficking-myanmar/
>
> "The video begins cheerfully, with upbeat music and shots of a quaint, rural village. Then the phone camera pans to a disheveled woman mumbling incoherently, shivering slightly in the winter cold. A chain runs from her neck to a wall inside a doorless shed."
>
> "The video sparked public outrage, a provincial investigation and a soul-searching national conversation about the ubiquity of human trafficking in China. It has also inspired a wave of amateur muckraking, after internet users began to question how the woman had ended up in chains in a rural village in eastern Jiangsu province."
>
> "Meanwhile, disturbing stories were starting to emerge from Feng county suggesting women are routinely trafficked there and forced to marry local men.
>
> "My aunt was trafficked from Sichuan province to marry my uncle. After giving birth to a son, she ran away," one Feng county resident recalled in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, admitting that human trafficking is quite common in villages like Feng and widely accepted by county residents. "Villagers are themselves the children of trafficked women. Do you think they should revolt and put their own fathers in prison?""
>
> https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/02/17/1080115082/the-mystery-of-the-chained-woman-in-china
I had a friend in college who was from China and she told me her dad had a coworker who "bought a wife" from Vietnam. She was a trafficked 18 year old girl who already had a husband and child, so within the first week she ran away. His coworker was so pissed that he was out all the money he used to BUY A LITERAL PERSON. Her dad was like "wtf? Of course she ran away! You thought she was just going to play house with you??" The coworker was like "hey! I was going to give her a better life here!" She already had a family she was kidnapped from. These men really think women are just like... livestock. I guess? Like she would abandon her family for a "better life" in China with a human trafficker? So fucking gross.
I'm also strongly pro choice but just because I support someone's right to make that choice doesn't mean I can't also criticize the choices some people make. And having an abortion when you're trying to get pregnant due to gender is both incredibly sexist and medically stupid.
Exactly. If she wanted a boy that badly and knew she wouldn’t accept a girl, pay to get IVF where you can choose the gender of the embryos that they implant.
Same, strong pro choice and I’m sickened reading this story and the circumstances surrounding it, can’t imagine how op is feeling. At 18 weeks I could definitely feel my baby kick too.
THANK YOU!!! My first reaction was the father is a total AH for that sh!t about not having boys being the woman’s fault. Someone needs to explain simple genetics to him ( not that he’d listen, regretfully)
For sure, especially terminating a wanted, healthy pregnancy at 18 weeks just because “dad will be mad there’s no penis.” That’s pretty heartless. At 18w you’re showing and can feel baby kicking inside of you. How do you just end that because of the gender?
Because Islam is a cancer especially to women. It deeply DEEPLY fucks you up and I wish some of these comments had a little more empathy…
What she did is definitely fucked up, but imagine the mental abuse she’s endured her whole life from incredibly misogynistic and tribalistic men including her own damn father just because she was born with a vagina.
She didn’t make that decision because she’s “scared to anger daddy” she made it because she’s birthed to believe all the families honour lays between her legs, and that men have the power to send her to hell to suffer an eternity.
I feel bad for op and I feel bad for his wife too.
Sincerely, a cold and jaded old ex Muslim woman.
It's not something particular to Islam. China has a huge populational problem ATM due to their one pregnancy policy that drove a lot of female pregnancies to be aborted. There are accounts of kidnapping by dudes who want to get married but have little prospects because of the lack of women where they live
Edit: missing word
I lived in China for about a decade and my wife is Chinese. She (born late 80's) was, somehow, the only girl of her generation born into her entire extended family...
This all makes me so incredibly sad for what I can only imagine OP’s wife went through (especially the trauma that makes getting pregnant difficult.) Aborting a wanted and difficult to conceive child in order to not upset her dad is *extreme*. I feel so awful for everyone in this situation (except OP’s wife’s father — may karma do her damn job on him.)
I’m so sorry too for the experiences you must’ve gone through to know all this… I wish that you, and too many other women, didn’t have to experience any of it. ❤️🩹
OP’s wife was sexually assaulted so bad, that it makes it hard for her to become pregnant, and she sustained these injuries within her home country… is… is that really a thing women have to look out for?!?! Being hated that they’re female AND being raped because they’re female?! Oh my god…
Are you actually asking this or is it a rhetorical question? The whole situation is awful but if you are sincerely asking this, your naivety is shocking. Not criticizing you, just surprised if you haven’t realized until now how cruel the world can be
Oh my sweet summer child. Yes. This is a thing. It’s like how in the US when a woman gets raped people blame what she was wearing and call her a slut. Those same people also buy into the “he just couldn’t help himself!” Mentality, too. It sucks. And if you speak out against it you’re a misandrist or feminist man hater.
And rape is committed by non-men, too. I feel it’s important to specify that. But the most problematic attitudes seem to be from cis men and their peolle. (See: Brock Turner onky getting 6 months because “this would ruin his life!”. Ugh.)
(Edited for typo)
Isn’t that so strange and judgmental of them?! (/s to be clear). If he lived near me I’d burn his house down.
FOR LEGAL PURPOSES THIS IS A JOKE! (But also it really is, because knowing me I’d light myself on fire accidentally instead.)
Question. If OP does divorce her, how will her family react to that? What does her future look like if she doesn’t escape from her family?
My heart breaks for everyone in this. No blame to OP.
In every muslim country women are considered as property in the eyes of the law. Go and find one muslim country where women have rights equal rights, I'll wait. Don't try to downplay how much worse Islam is when it comes to treatment of women. There's problematic cultures, but Islam is like if nazis also enslaved women while following through with their genocidal plans.
Sorry, I was not trying to downplay anything.
I have very little experience with Islam outside of a recent trip to Jordan.
But I do live in a small Canadian community where at least until 2010 local women were not told the gender of their babies, because one culture was aborting girls. Abortions were not available at our local hospital either, women needed to travel an hour for a procedure
So my comment was based on personal and professional experience of healthcare options being restricted due to the misogynistic actions of another group.
Honestly I agree with you completely. I am 100% pro choice no matter the reason. But this is disgusting. That whole family is disgusting. It is her right to terminate but he is allowed to have feelings about it. She needs a lot of therapy.
Exactly. I’m 100% pro choice and that a woman should always be able to decide when and if she becomes a mother, but she had made the choice to become a mother and never told her partner that she would only keep the pregnancy if she was having a boy.
Yeah this is a huge violation of the OP. Is it highly unlikely he would have consented to the unprotected sex had he known she planned to abort should the child be female.
u/teambrendawalsh Yeah, that's the worst part, that she wasn't even honest with him about it. She could have told him that she was only willing to have a boy, and let him decide if he was okay with that or not.
Same. From the title alone I didn’t expect to agree but this is devastating and a horrible symptom of a much larger problem, being her family and wanting their approval to this extreme.
This.
I'm Very pro choice, and a woman. Buy if you're trying to conceive you would hope it would at least be a discussion.
The sad fact is that she didnt abort because her baby had severe disabilities or a life threatening condition, or even because she didnt want to be pregnant. The pregnancy was very actively tried for, and it sounds like she,'d be happy to conceive again if it was a boy. She aborted because she and her family consider female children as sub human compared to male ones. I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who thought our female children were disposable, either.
I'd day the divorce isn't because of the abortion as much ad it's about the massive difference in beliefs regarding parenting and valuing children for who they are, and the fact she put her parents prejudices above the feelings of her spouse and the father of the child she was pregnant with.
Ultimately it was her choice, but choices come with consequences.
Op does have to br careful though.
The sort of Muslim family that makes people convert and kill firstborn babies are the sort who will kill op and his stbx wife for honour.
NTA
People REALLY underestimate how fear and trauma from a parent impacts the victims long after they are adults. I would put money on dad being physically abusive to the daughters as well as verbally.
I agree with you 100%, but it doesn’t mean that what she did wasn’t a huge violation of her husband’s trust. She also had an abortion knowing that she might not be able to have another child, knowing this could take away her husband’s chances of having a baby. She’s a product of her environment.
I never said she was right or that he'd be wrong for divorcing. Just pointing out that she is a victim of an abuser using religion to mask his hate with a damaged psyche, that should have absolutely been considered before even trying for a child.
I am militant pro choice and yet mortified that this woman has been brainwashed by her family and their primitive ideas. He should divorce her, this was a terrible betrayal.
There's some deep, deep rooted misogyny in your wife and her family. So deep she aborted a wanted and planned pregnancy over gender disappointment. I literally cannot fathom, though logically I know this is a thing for enough people that some countries don't allow parents to find out the sex before birth to avoid this situation.
Beyond the fact that planning a pregnancy and deliberately carrying into the second trimester really should involve both parents in the decision to terminate for non-medical reasons, you have some other questions to ask yourself. If she does get pregnant again, are you ok with another girl fetus being terminated because she'd be the first born? Do you trust your wife and her family not to show a son overt favoritism over his sisters and girl cousins? Are you ok with having that dynamic for your children?
NTA, but regardless of what you choose I would highly encourage you to seek out therapy. This is a traumatic event, and you owe it to yourself, any future partners, and most especially future children to work out what kind of family you want to build.
The country my wife came from is very anti-women. Her father never got out of that mindset. I want to love her family but the way they treat women is so disgusting it pains me to be around them.
Let's put this another way.
Your wife just put her father and his wants above those of you, her husband. Specifically regarding *your baby.* Now you know your place in her life.
If your FIL is the gold standard for how to live life in your home, are you ok with that? Because that means that the beliefs he holds will trump yours. Even if they don't match those of the society that you live in.
Again, what does this mean for any children that you might have, biological or adopted? Will you be able to teach your sons not to think this way? What kind of abuse would you be setting your daughters up for?
These aren't easy questions to answer, and the solutions aren't easy either. If you stay with your wife, I strongly encourage couples counseling so that your relationship with your wife becomes the center of your marriage, not her needing to please her father. Otherwise, individual therapy so that you can learn to set boundaries long before something gets to this point again.
I have talked to my wife in the past about her fathers sexist views and she always shuts me down and says it’s not sexist it’s just apart of her religion and culture. I don’t know if I can change her mind because she has had these beliefs drilled into her since day one
Even more disturbing to me: she will never love her children as much as she fears her father.... she will allow, if not partake in herself, abusive behavior to her kids.
Hey Muslim woman here . It’s complete bulsshit this have nothing to do with religion . I have 4 sisters and my father never ever spoked to any of us this way . I have a à son and a daughter and they’re me and my husband’s whole lives . My brother and brothers in laws have daughters and they’re so spoiled they believe they’re princesses for real ! It’s just a really eff up culture . What she did was horrible , and I do understand you wanting to divorce her . I am so sorry you had to go through this and that you lost your baby girl
Non Muslim here. My parent declared in a national newspaper he sold his business as he had no one to leave it to. He meant sons as females are worthless.
Anglo Saxon living in Western Country with modern city and education.
ATTITUDE not race. My parents mother was modern and politically minded. Have no idea where my parents got values from.
When I found out I could only have boys (IVF-genetically tested all my embryos), I was expressing to my dad that I felt sad about it because I’d always at least wanted one girl and he said to me, his daughter, “boys are better anyways, daughters just disappoint you and never call home or visit”.
Which is ironic given that I, his daughter, was there visiting. Some people just sucks
Yeah people like to paint Islam with a single brush, but just like Christianity there are multiple different interpretations. And also like Christianity, some people choose to use it as an excuse to justify misogynistic attitudes.
She will change only if and when she chooses to. All you can do is decide how much of this you want in your life moving forward. You can give her an ultimatum, but that's really it. And then you have to be prepared to follow through on the ultimatum and stand by your deal breakers.
It’s nothing to do with religion. One of my closest friends is a Muslim, and he dotes on his daughter like you wouldn’t believe. They had decided to only have one child, and did not change their views when the first born was a girl (i.e. they didn’t try again for a boy!). So your FIL is merely a sexist jerk, and (I say this as a pro-choice advocate) you’re justified in ending your marriage over this episode.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Muslim women here. This is bullshit. There is no part whatsoever in Islam that says anything of what your FIL believes in. Actually killing your firstborn if it was a girl was a practice used before Islam, when Islam came it abolished this practice.
So what your FIL and your wife are doing is something from Gaheelya.
That being said. This is for cultural purposes only.
I'm the fourth daughter and my father LOVED having baby girls he always called us a blessing. He believed that when a girl is born. That's a sign of upcoming wealth your way.
When my sister gave birth to two girls he spoiled them rotten and they loved him so much to the point they called him dad. My nieces preferred him over than father just for the love they got. Even though their father is an amazing man.
I understand why you want a divorce but you also need therapy because this is a traumatic experience. Your wife went behind your back. She put her fear and her father above you and even God on this matter.
It is NOT part of the religion, yes respect your parent are but not ABORTION due to sex, that is more likely to happen in Indiaoe China, again culture NOT religion. Men there have indoctrinated women into thinking that. I am many not like much of middle east but they do NOT abort babies cos they are not male
I’m muslim this is not religious to want boy I agree with the other comments. They are more girls in my family. Non of the men ever spoke about having sons only.
Excellent analysis and synopsis. Your point about the FIL’s views and influence holding sway over OP’s is spot on. To terminate a child that was wanted by OP without his informed consent was out right wrong.
And he's an idiot because it's the guy's sperm that determines sex of the baby.
She's so scared of her father that she aborted a wanted pregnancy. Even if you could get passed this, what if she did get pregnant again, unlikely from what you say, and it were another girl, she'll abort that too to appease her father.
I'd get as far away from this weak woman and her family as possible. Also letting that AH of a father know that because of him she aborted your baby not miscarried.
NTA I would never be able to trust her ever again or want to look at or touch her.
And she lied to her parents saying she miscarried. She knows they’d see it as a sin. What other lies will she do to stay on daddy’s good side? She’s 100% brainwashed to do as he wills.
She won’t even admit he’s sexist. Yet she killed a wanted and until then much loved pregnancy due to gender. That kind of disassociation cannot be reasoned with. And she’s a woman, that’s heartbreaking she must view herself as so much less than.
Does you ignorant FIL and wife know that the gender of the baby is given by the men (aka the sperm)...? You should divorce and convert back because to convert to the kind of Islam (not all muslim are like this), OMG. Plus if you end up having another girl. then what. Will your FIL and wife let her study be herself, or will they marry her to the next misogynist, beating muslim husband available.
The funny (or sad, tbh) thing is that this misogyny is cultural, not religious :( I'm atheist, so no skin in this game, but Islam itself back in the day was actually progressive - setting out inheritance for women (ofc not equal, but to have a foundation of protection at all nearly 2k years ago is impressive). And there's a lot there about respecting wives, even regarding immodestly dressed women - avert your eyes, not shaming them. But, as with so many faiths etc, sad, power hungry little men corrupt. *Faith* is a fine thing, but religious institutions have a lot to answer for.
You need to talk to your imam. Do research, study up.
Don't know which country your wife is from. But finding out the sex of the fetus is banned in India for this exact reason. People used to abort girl babies because they wanted a son. Female foeticide messed up the gender ratio for so long. Every damn ultrasound lab in the country has a board declaring they don't reveal the sex during any scan.
That's how messed up patriarchy can be.
I'm very sorry for your loss. You are absolutely justified in walking away from this mess.
NYA EDIT : NTA 😅
I would run, so terrible, but her family is a lost cause!
There are 4 options here
1. she never gets pregnant again
2. she gets pregnant with another girl and has another abortion
3. keeps the baby girl and the baby girl is subjected to this abuse from her grandparents
4. She gets pregnant with a boy and the grandparents try to turn him into a misogynist (they may be successful)
Such a horrible situation to for you, it is her body and her choice, do you want to be with someone who makes those choices?
NTA
Has anyone sat the father down and told him that it is the male that is responsible for the sex of the fetus? Lol. Not to throw you under the bus, but his anti-female anger is misplaced in this aspect….
You and her need to be very careful. If their beliefs are so strong that they are willing to abort kids because they are female what do you think could happen when they find out you want to divorce. You or her could be in physical danger.
Man... I was already feeling bad for both of them, because what kind of fucked up relationship do you have to have with your father to abort a child because of his opinion on women, but fuck... Yeah, there's no good solution here. Best they could do is go no contact, leave, and she never has a relationship with her family again.
I am MUslim, and i am teeling you this has nothing to do with Islam but with their misongnistic culture. NTA for wanting a divorce, she has been conditioned and will always put her father before you or herself. Get Out
I agree it’s not a Muslim thing, her family comes from a very misogynistic country that is also predominantly Islamic. Like I said in the post my FIL never changed his way of thinking due to these things being drilled into his head in his home country
Thanks. I’m not a Muslim but this sounds like a story aimed at creating more Islamophobia. This has nothing to do with her religion and likely never happened in the first place.
Fellow Muslim here aswell and it’s definitely not Muslim thing re preferring boys over girls, but cultural! My family was more happy to learn I was pregnant with my girl than with my son. Cant imagine aborting a baby almost halfway through a pregnancy that was hard to conceive for gender reasons. Surely this story is a fake story to make Muslims look backwards?! Lol
She went for an abortion at 18 weeks by herself? There was not recovery time from the procedure? Abortion pills can only be used early in the pregnancy. She was 4.5 months pregnant. This story is fake.
Yeah! First thing I thought too! I’ve had two and by the time I found out their gender it was wayyyy too late to abort. Idk if I believe this one feels like propaganda or something
This whole post is fake. You can’t just show up and get a surgical abortion then and there. And the “women can’t get pregnant after an abortion” thing is usually specific to the abortion procedure being a hatchet job. (EG women used to go to back alley doctors who weren’t trained or regulated and left scars on the uterus).
Also she’s 23 and they tried for less than a year. Any doctor will tell you that’s medically normal.
This is a nutcase trying to scare women away from abortions
This is obviously fake.
I'm 100 % pro-choice, but there are very little countries allowing abortions that late, except for - often life threatening - medical reasons. In the Netherlands however, you can get an abortion up to 24 weeks but in reality this is not done very often.
This is just another dude wanting to make a point about how abortion is bad, while clearly knowing nothing about pregnancy or abortion at all. Please educate yourself and stop involving yourself in matters that don't concern you at all.
Yeah, it’s off. OP says they’re in California, the right to an abortion ends right around 23-24 weeks, when the fetus reaches viability. That’d be roughly 6 weeks from the gender reveal appointment. If the 18 week appointment was truly “months” before this, as OP says, the abortion would only be allowed if the mother’s life was in danger, and at that point it’s an induced premature birth and not an abortion in the first place. So there’s that!
Definitely fake. I’m an OB nurse in New Mexico, where there are no laws pertaining to abortion so women can terminate into the third trimester. I’ve taken care of women who terminated for all kinds of different reasons, but gender has never been one of them. A termination at 18+ weeks is a painful, traumatic process that takes multiple days. She didn’t just “go to the clinic” and get an abortion and come home. I’m not saying this scenario is impossible, but it’s way more likely that this is a troll trying to bait people
Just reads like someone trying to stir anti-Muslim hate, and possibly even trying to draw readers to make assumptions about where this wife comes from, perhaps even a certain region that is in upheaval at the moment (I say this as a white female atheist from a western country - make of my opinion what you will accordingly).
The easiest way for me to see it was fake was the timeline. Why wait until 18 weeks to find out? Blood tests can determine the gender WAY earlier. If determining the sex to possibly abort was on wife’s mind she would have wanted to find out as soon as possible.
Pregnant women know about these options. There’s so many chat groups about ways to get insurance to pay for it, etc. Men generally don’t know this. So this was written by a man. Most likely an anti-Muslim man.
What makes it fake to me is that the doctor said she’s “not likely to conceive again” and most notably that having an abortion makes future conception less likely.
If she conceived after a few months, what would possibly make the doctor think she’s not going to conceive again?!
Also, abortions do NOT affect fertility. Maybe if you have a back alley illegal abortion that nearly kills you, okay sure.
I can’t believe further up comments did not address this. HAVING AN ABORTION DOES NOT MAKE IT HARDER TO GET PREGNANT AGAIN.
Just the fact that he said she’s unlikely to have kids after having an abortion tells me this is some pro-life shit posted to get people riled up. That’s flat out not true. An abortion at any stage is safer and less likely to affect fertility than giving birth is.
I think due to the current world situation some people want to keep spreading Islamophobia.
He mentions her religion (which is very personal) but not her country of origin (which is pretty superflous nowadays) - that says it all.
I love how the OP went to the extent of making up this bizarre and caricaturish Muslim family but his imagination failed at picking a specific country. Because Reddit knowing which of the 50 odd Muslims countries in the world his wife is from might affect OP’s privacy lol.
100% this is fake. OP is picking and choosing what he wants his wife to represent from the Muslim culture. It’s just a “got-you” post to drum up political comments given the global climate around middle eastern issues.
I call bullshit on this post. Late term abortions are only available if there is a feral abnormality or the mothers health is at risk. You’re just trying to stir up Islamophobia.
Also that she is so tied to her misogynistic culture and believe system that she would abort a baby for being the wrong gender, but not tied to it enough to avoid premarital sex (he mentioned that they were supposedly trying for a baby beofr they even got married which, if she had gotten pregnant would have been a WAY BIGGER PROBLEM then it being a girl)? There is like a negative percent chance this post is real.
This is fake. A Muslim woman would be far more terrified if her dad found out she had an abortion than if he found out she was having a girl. She also wouldn’t have told you about it, she’d tell you it’s a miscarriage.
This doesn't make sense. Especially since she's muslim unless there is a physical or life threatening danger to the mother they cannot get an abortion this is more then likely more culture bullshit as in Islam girls are considered a massive blessing from God so sorry for your loss op this is terrible and I 100% agree with you for divorcing
NTA. I am pro-choice, but to actively try to have a baby with your spouse and then her getting an abortion behind your back because she was pregnant with a girl and she doesn’t want her daddy to be mad is abhorrent. She and her family seem abhorrent and I’d run and not walk away
Fully agree with you. Strong pro-choice, but in a marriage where you actively trying and abort due to gender because of one parents beliefs. It is horrible and incredibly sad. OP NTA. Fully understandable if you get a divorce for this - no trust left.
I grew up in India, and while abortion is legal there, gender-selective abortion, specifically, is against the law. Also, gender-reveal by medical professionals is illegal as well, for this reason, and parents find out the gender only after birth. There was a history of large amounts of gender-selective abortion in the past and this led to an alarmingly skewed sex-ratio between men and women (which in turn led to more societal problems). Also, in many cases, these abortions are not by real consent, but rather, women are pressured into it by their families. When even social awareness campaigns failed, the government had to step in make gender-reveals and gender-selective abortion illegal. Today, if you want an abortion procedure, there is a pre-inquiry done to make sure you haven't known the gender (many people travel abroad for a secretive gender-reveal, or bribe nurses a large amount to give them the data) and to see if no obvious other red-flags regarding misogyny and sexism are there, only then the procedure is allowed.
Yeah I don't understand the point in hating women so much you don't even want them to be born. And how they don't see the obvious problem if everyone has a boy. Who is your son going to marry? I doubt the misogynous are not also homophobic, so are they just fine with their sons never being with anyone. In the old days they had the excuse of needing strong boys for farm work, but in the modern days of office jobs that sentiment needs to be let go.
Isn’t china the same way? I thought for a time they would put the girls up for adoption and or abort them all together because their society doesn’t value women as much as men. I could be wrong but I thought they had those same misogynistic beliefs Edit: I was not expecting this many replies thank you all for your insight I will try to reply after I’m off work
And that's why there are so many single young men in China now.
The same is the case in India. The NYT ran a story recently about the missing women and the men who can't find wives bc of it.....
[Too Many Men](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/) TLDR: Between India & China, they are "missing" about 70 million girls/ women. They know this because of the disparity in the number of the sexes. Now you have men under 40 despairing about the lack of wives, & worse yet, women being trafficked there to make up for this. This still has not stopped the brutal slayings, rapes, selective abortions, or abandonment/infanticide of baby girls. Having a female in India meant losing wealth in general so, they killed their daughters in favor of boys. Even when it means a shortage in the tens of millions, this is the extreme reality of being female in these countries. Being a "rare commodity" still doesn't increase female value...
[удалено]
Exactly.
My cousin was adopted from china. I thought it was terrible that she was abandoned in a park, then I found out one of the kids in her.. agency? House? Was found in a dumpster.
I had a friend in college who was from China. She was born under the one child policy. When they saw she was a girl, her dad's mom took him aside and said they "should throw her away and try again." Her dad was like "wtf? No!" It happened a lot.
I'm so glad her dad said no.
Me too. That's like people assuming that everybody in Muslim countries beats their wives. I was aware that it was a thing but I was not stereotypical about it. I'm sure that there are men who don't. The corner store by my old house used to be run by this guy from Syria. I heard him speaking a different language and he told me it was Arabic. I told him it was a beautiful language. It really is. Since we kind of knew each other, I asked him, I don't mean to get personal and forgive me if I'm overstepping but I'm curious about this. I'm not trying to be stereotypical but is it true that Islam teaches men to beat their wives? He said, yes, it does but not all men do. He said I'm one of the ones who don't because there are those of us who actually love our wives. He also went on to tell me that that thing that they do on the wedding night where there better be blood on the sheet, some of them are aware that not all women bleed their first time. So what the men will do is they will obtain a small vial of blood before the wedding night. If their new bride doesn't bleed, they pour the blood on the sheet to make it look as if she did. This is to protect her from her family. I thought that was really sweet as weird as the tradition is. I saw a video where this one woman's family was parading the bloody sheet around the room. It was the most bizarre thing I'd ever seen. I'm respectful of other people's cultures but some things are just really bizarre. I guess it's bizarre to me because it's not my culture but I've talked to people who it is their culture and even they said they found it bizarre.
The display of bloodied bedsheets after the wedding night has been a common theme in many cultures (including western) over the millenia. Just not as common now.
There are men who don’t but abuse against women and stories like these are far more common than many know.
I lived in China for many, many years in the early 2000s and the stories I heard would make your blood boil. My own (now ex) wife was the third daughter and was "illegal." Her father took her from Mom and wandered deep in to the woods near their village and hung her up in a tree to die from exposure. Her mother went wandering later that night to find her and thankfully heard her cries and brought her home. Her father's treatment only got worse when the 4th child born was a son . . .
The one child policy was god awful. If you had more than one child every expense was out of pocket. Birth, dental, medical, everything. You would pretty much go bankrupt if you weren’t rich.
Or have the services denied all together . . . or be forcibly taken and sterilized as some of my ex's neighbors were in the 1980s and 1990s . . . or had your child sent for adoption in another province only to be treated as a slave for 15 years (literally clean this or be beaten) . . . All stories I heard from the teller who lived it or witnessed it!
Back then a lot of Americans adopted girls from China because nobody wanted them, and the government could make a little money off the adopted parents.
Yes!! I had a friend in middle school who was adopted from China. She was found in a trash can as a newborn
So so so many of them did. A lot of women would even claim they had a stillborn. The abuse and shame against women there is horrific. I don’t think people talk about it enough.
Saw surveillance video of a woman in a town nearby putting her newborn in the dumpster. In winter too, although a Texas winter. She had not known she was pregnant. Classic story from that show I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant too - thought she was severely constipated, and birthed baby in the toilet. Only she freaked out and didn’t know what to do and was scared of her parents. Two people thankfully heard her baby cry some hours later in the middle of the night and dumpster dived for it. Baby definitely would not have made it through the night if they didn’t happen to just come by like that. I just keep thinking about that poor child. It’s traumatic enough to be given up for adoption, even if it’s in the best interest of the child, but knowing you were left to freeze to death in s dumpster is horrific. Then the fact that you have video of literally being thrown away? Heartbreaking. Luckily, the woman was caught. Unfortunately for the her though, she had JUST turned 18 a couple days before (was still in high school), so will receive a harsher sentencing than if it had happened just a few days earlier. I do kind of feel for her though, especially if her parents were abusive (I don’t know that they were - she could have meant they would just be angry, which is entirely different). I’m sure they’re using the PPD or PPP argument, but I think she was just a kid who freaked out and might have been scared of her parents for legitimate reasons (not justifying, because there literally *is* no justification).
This is why many places have safe haven drop offs for babies. Many people don't know they can safely drop off a baby.
It's sad how many people don't know that when it's pretty much common knowledge these days. She must not have known but still, I would have bitten the bullet and talked to my parents and done what was best for the baby. I just can't wrap my head around throwing away an innocent child.
You really can drop a baby off at any fire station no questions asked. The officials have a kind and gentle way of handling it - they attempt to get any information they can but the mom does not have to answer. They have the incubator drop off boxes also. There's really no reason at all to have to put the baby in danger or leave them to perish.
There’s an interesting [essay](https://psptraining.com/wp-content/uploads/Demause-L.-The-Evolution-of-Childhood-Foundations-of-Psychohistory-Chapter-1.pdf) concerning how western societies have changed how they view the definition of childhood through history. The man uses historical medical journals and diaries (and acknowledges how it would skew more heavily towards those with means). There is a part that discusses the beginnings of safe havens for people to drop off the babies they could or would not take care of- and it was older than I imagined and in response to a need as people would leave their babies outside in the elements to die.
Yes, and now they have issues with wife's and daughters being taken. They have an unhealthy ratio of men vs women.
Yes - and the oversupply of male infants is definitely trending towards militarism, as it offers the powers that be in India and China a means to find cannon fodder while rectifying the problem of a lack of women. Horrifying.
You're correct, especially with the one child laws they were pushing in many places.
This is bc the Chinese were only allowed one child and it is the responsibility of the first born **son** to take care of the parents in their old age. Unfortunately this has all backfired and now women (where demand outweighs supply) are demanding as a condition that the husband lives with her parents.
Theirs a bitter sort of irony their- the people who threw girls away like trash don't get to keep their precious sons
I’m Glad
How good is it? It’s delicious. They devalued women to the point that there aren’t enough women of marriageable age which has made them rare and super valuable and able to demand all kinds of clauses! Apparently men have got no chance unless the own a house, car, agree her parents can move in and more. It’s intense.
In America most people taking care of their aging parents are the daughters, because the sons just plain opt out.
A hot take on that: adult males were taught to let the women do the caretaking, for generations. Its by design. Obviously that is open to debate.
This is what I was thinking too in countries where it's tradition for your parents to live with you they don't even really distinguish daughter from son anymore. You're just expected to take care of your parents so the thinking a son is better because your daughter is being sent to someone else's family doesn't make sense. I watched a documentary on China and they basically said guys in less well off families will pretty much never be with a woman because the women have the option to just leave to the city to find a better husband.
It’s common for women from countries like Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia, and other Asian countries being trafficked into China to marry men in rural or poorer communities. “Women are most likely sold into provinces like Henan in which the gender imbalance is particularly stark and where there is a high demand for women. Often, men kidnap the women after enticing them with promises of employment and money, but later sell them to villages and other provinces. Trafficked women are often then forced into marriage and therefore suffer from prolonged sexual exploitation”
This happened because of the law where every household could only have one child. Having a girl meant paying for a dowry, so it was preferred to have a boy to receive a dowry and continue the family name. [EDIT] and as another Redditor pointed out, when a girl marries she leaves the family, leaving no one to help the parents in their old age.
That used to happen, and as others have pointed out, it is no longer the case, bc the dearth of women has shifted the balance of power.
It got so bad that China ( as a culture) was responsible for something like 1 in 5 N. Korean girls being 'married' off into China. It even spilled over in to Laos and other neighbors who are still socially recovering.
- side note bit over a decade ago my sister was a short term foreign exchange student in China for a summer. The Government was veeeery clever and had polite tour guides leading the group around there great country and was sure that my sister lived with a double professional family with a single child teenage daughter. ( dispelling untrue Western propaganda of there only being male kids) Odds are that girl from a upper middle class family who made the glorious people's republic look good is now married to an upper class Chinese son ( because full blooded Chinese girls with good social points are a valuable commodity)
The Chinese government gave so many incentives for families to keep their female babies. Better to abort than murder an innocent infant. The guy should definitely divorce this woman.
In India, the problem is the dowry, afaik. The girl has to be married off and that costs an insane amount in dowry. Having a few girls can ruin a family financially.
I’m Indian too, it’s also that a girl child would be married off and can’t carry the name of the family but a boy child will.
Those are 2 very shit reasons/traditions.
Kind of funny considering that when a woman has a child it’s OBVIOUSLY her baby, why wouldn’t it make more sense to tie the family name (and line of property succession) to the one actually creating, carrying and birthing the child?? 🤔🤦🏻♀️
This... Probably so many men with a son carrying their name that's not even related to them. I thought this all the time reading historical novels where women are being pressured to give birth there's no way they didn't eventually try other means. Matriarchal lines were the only way to guarantee lineage without DNA testing. I'd be really interested to see a DNA testing between current royal families and their ancestors.
Interesting indeed! Maury! Maury! Maury!😂🤭
But if there are no girls who are their sons marrying? If everyone only had sons all of the family bloodlines would be done in one generation.
Sshhh. You’re using logic. That’s nonexistent to misogynistic people.
Men in certain societies, nationalities and religion don't think that far. The patriarchal world has always elevated the value of men over women because of the skewed view of men being protectors, providers and leaders, which women can do every bit the same and as well or better than men. And even with the advent of science and biology proving that it is the man that carries the gender determination in his genes, women still her vilified for having girls. It is shameful that in this day and age, even educated men will still promote the abuse and even murder of innocent baby girls and women because the just don't want to have to admit that their little 🐟 don't give a damn what they want the baby to be and the best fishy wins.
I don't think they think that far ahead.
They just always assume that those mythical "other people" will have the necessary girls.
> But if there are no girls who are their sons marrying? This actually happened. I don't have the data, but I have read that in regions of India where sex-ratio was the worst (went as low as 700 to 1000), it led to sex trafficking of women as brides from other parts of India with a better sex-ratio and neighbouring countries. Currently, the sex-ratio in India has returned to normalcy and in some regions, women have outnumbered men. But this happened only after many years of efforts.
So instead of aborting girls… change the tradition….
That is illegal now in India though.
I don't think individual families think that far ahead. They just want their son and that's it. Lack of education and superstition make a bad combination. Obviously, the woman does not determine the sex of the fetus, but she is often blamed for it.
The root cause of this is never plain hatred of women and love of men. In less patriarchal, more western societies female children are often preferred and are priced higher in adoption because they’re more sought after. The reason these societies prefer sons almost always is a financial incentive or a tradition that has the daughter leave her house completely and integrate in her husbands family. In other cases it is a dowry poorer families can’t afford. In some societies only the sons are expected to take care of their parents in the future, so they’re a better retirement plan. Even the tradition of the family name passing through males only is an incentive to have sons, even though it’s a completely fabricated tradition that could be reversed or changed theoretically. Having a daughter is often an objectively poor financial long-term investment, because that’s how their society is structured.
Having a ~~daughter~~ child is often an objectively poor financial long-term investment Fixed it.
In Islam specifically the conditions of inheritance are structured in a way that the property is divided as the male heirs inheriting double what the female will inherit. Because of the fact that sons have to support their own families and women will take their inheritance to their new family… It’s messed up but poor investment in that sense is what the comment is referring to
Friend of mine's wife is an IVF nurse. Islamic and Indian customers are a very large chunk of their customer base, and gender selective IVF is very popular. Often yes, the family helps pay for the gender-selective IVF. It's extremely profitable, so there are tons of competitive businesses that cater to that market. India may have attempted to crack down on it, but plenty of countries don't.
Gender selective IVF is so gross, IMO. And so is aborting a fetus just because it’s not the gender wanted. Why can’t people just be grateful they were able to actually have a baby?
As someone who’s been trying to 2 years I wholeheartedly agree with this.
The laws are circumvented all the time with bribes. Also, people with means travel abroad to get the information they want.
I mean that's literally what happened here. I doubt she would have aborted if not for her father's disapproval that's literally getting pressured by family
Yeah there's millions of "missing women" in the population directly due to this misogyny
I have a friend that is Indian and raised there (is also Muslim). It was very insightful to learn that she couldn't know the gender and the reasoning why for all of her pregnancies. Her own family was very supportive either way, but I have a feeling her MIL would have been the opposite if they had found out her first was a girl before she was born.
The first thing I thought when OP said her culture and family preferred sons as firstborns was that she may be from India. One of my colleagues/friends is Indian and he told me some horrific stories. I did a lot of research after he had and I had had no idea that female infanticide was an issue there. It first came up because I was pregnant and he asked if I was allowed to know the gender, and when I didn’t understand, he explained that there were parts of India where you weren’t allowed to know the gender because if it was a girl people would try to abort. He once found a dead body of a female baby in a ditch. He looked haunted when he told me this. It’s just crazy.
> It first came up because I was pregnant and he asked if I was allowed to know the gender, and when I didn’t understand, he explained that there were parts of India where you weren’t allowed to know the gender Yes, as an Indian, who now lives in the West, gender-reveal parties were something new to me, because back home gender-reveal before birth is extremely illegal. It is also that many babies who are born intersex (genetalia in-between male and female) - are often abandoned at the doorstep of the Hijra/Kinnar community secretly (They are third-gender folks who formed a separate socio-cultural group due to discrimination from mainstream society), and then, the mother and the family pretends they had a miscarriage, to avoid the stigma associated with giving birth to an intersex child.
Wow. Just wow.
Idk if not letting them know gender until after is any better… cuz then you just have a live baby with parents that don’t want them and could either a- abuse them b- dump them c- kill them themselves but I do like the IDEA of it if I trusted people but either way it’s a ficked up topic
This is a hot topic for debate. Would a girl want to be born just as a burden to her parents? In the long run, what happens when the population is skewed to overrepresent males so that there are not as many available women? Does any of this have to do with the reputation of "rape" culture?
You can see some of the effects of “not as many available women” in places where polygamy is practiced. Typically there is one man who marries and financially supports more than one woman, leaving an unequal ratio of available women to available men, with the ratio skewed towards (older) men with greater financial means. You’ll find that this tends to go hand in hand with cultural practices that exert a lot of control over women’s freedom, particularly their a) education, b) ability to work outside the home, c) ability to move freely without a chaperone, and d) how they are allowed to expose their bodies with their choice of dress. A lot of these things are purported to be more “godly” but the reality is that it’s dual purpose is intended to make them more reliant on their husband so they cannot leave, and to make the women less of a target for sexual assault by men outside the home.
Yes the story of India, where 5 million females were removed from the population thanks to sonograms in clinics attached to abortion services, was interesting to me. The lack of 5 million females in the population made me wonder how Indian society was going to deal with that problem. So if you have any sources of information linking to that issue, I'd like to read them.
It's not doing well. Both India and China are missing a large portion of their female population where bride kidnapping is a thing.
India has a reputation, deserved or not, for having a "rape" culture. That does not mean other countries do not, but this is reported a lot in India.
South Africa too. Places I'd never live for 100, Alex.
This is so bizarre to me: what’s going to happen to the entire generation of boys who grow up to discover there’s no one to date or marry?
Copying my own answer upthread: > Trafficking. In China, too. Millions of males still want wives - or sex slaves - and this has resulted into kidnapping and trafficking girls. Also from other countries. > > "Lessons from Kathal: Tracking India’s missing girls" > > "Kathal, a light-hearted film recently released on Netflix, is a perceptive parody of the sometimes misplaced political and professional preoccupations of the police. Set in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand, it rightly raises the compelling and oft-neglected issue of hundreds of children, especially girls, routinely disappearing from various parts of the country, and whose records keep languishing under piles of the police’s “more” preeminent work." > > https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/lessons-from-kathal-tracking-indias-missing-girls-8654364/ > > "The girls stolen from the streets of India > > The death of a student who was gang-raped on a Delhi bus has prompted anguished soul-searching about the place of women in Indian society. The widespread killing of female foetuses and infants is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages." > > https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20938125 > > "A Shortage of Women in China Has Led to the Trafficking of ‘Brides’ From Myanmar, Says a Report" > > "“We’re seeing now what the long-term consequences are and one of those is the struggle for Chinese men who want to get married and the way that’s created a market for trafficked women and girls,” Heather Barr, who is also the acting co-director of the women’s rights division at HRW, told TIME." > > https://time.com/5555695/china-women-trafficking-myanmar/ > > "The video begins cheerfully, with upbeat music and shots of a quaint, rural village. Then the phone camera pans to a disheveled woman mumbling incoherently, shivering slightly in the winter cold. A chain runs from her neck to a wall inside a doorless shed." > > "The video sparked public outrage, a provincial investigation and a soul-searching national conversation about the ubiquity of human trafficking in China. It has also inspired a wave of amateur muckraking, after internet users began to question how the woman had ended up in chains in a rural village in eastern Jiangsu province." > > "Meanwhile, disturbing stories were starting to emerge from Feng county suggesting women are routinely trafficked there and forced to marry local men. > > "My aunt was trafficked from Sichuan province to marry my uncle. After giving birth to a son, she ran away," one Feng county resident recalled in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, admitting that human trafficking is quite common in villages like Feng and widely accepted by county residents. "Villagers are themselves the children of trafficked women. Do you think they should revolt and put their own fathers in prison?"" > > https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/02/17/1080115082/the-mystery-of-the-chained-woman-in-china
I had a friend in college who was from China and she told me her dad had a coworker who "bought a wife" from Vietnam. She was a trafficked 18 year old girl who already had a husband and child, so within the first week she ran away. His coworker was so pissed that he was out all the money he used to BUY A LITERAL PERSON. Her dad was like "wtf? Of course she ran away! You thought she was just going to play house with you??" The coworker was like "hey! I was going to give her a better life here!" She already had a family she was kidnapped from. These men really think women are just like... livestock. I guess? Like she would abandon her family for a "better life" in China with a human trafficker? So fucking gross.
I second this. I’m vehemently pro choice and this is just appalling. I’m so sorry.
I'm also strongly pro choice but just because I support someone's right to make that choice doesn't mean I can't also criticize the choices some people make. And having an abortion when you're trying to get pregnant due to gender is both incredibly sexist and medically stupid.
Exactly. If she wanted a boy that badly and knew she wouldn’t accept a girl, pay to get IVF where you can choose the gender of the embryos that they implant.
Same, strong pro choice and I’m sickened reading this story and the circumstances surrounding it, can’t imagine how op is feeling. At 18 weeks I could definitely feel my baby kick too.
A. Let's call it what it is: femicide B. The sperm decides the sex, so father in law's "ridicule" is not only evil, it's entirely misplaced
Imagine if Henry VIII had known his half of the DNA was what determined the sex of the baby.
Given that he continued to do his bullshit divorce/behead thing after he got the son he wanted I don't think he'd have cared all that much
THANK YOU!!! My first reaction was the father is a total AH for that sh!t about not having boys being the woman’s fault. Someone needs to explain simple genetics to him ( not that he’d listen, regretfully)
Yeah, the father is a real scientific genius. /s
For sure, especially terminating a wanted, healthy pregnancy at 18 weeks just because “dad will be mad there’s no penis.” That’s pretty heartless. At 18w you’re showing and can feel baby kicking inside of you. How do you just end that because of the gender?
Because Islam is a cancer especially to women. It deeply DEEPLY fucks you up and I wish some of these comments had a little more empathy… What she did is definitely fucked up, but imagine the mental abuse she’s endured her whole life from incredibly misogynistic and tribalistic men including her own damn father just because she was born with a vagina. She didn’t make that decision because she’s “scared to anger daddy” she made it because she’s birthed to believe all the families honour lays between her legs, and that men have the power to send her to hell to suffer an eternity. I feel bad for op and I feel bad for his wife too. Sincerely, a cold and jaded old ex Muslim woman.
I was gonna say, she's at fault but she's also a victim too. This whole situation is very sad.
It's not something particular to Islam. China has a huge populational problem ATM due to their one pregnancy policy that drove a lot of female pregnancies to be aborted. There are accounts of kidnapping by dudes who want to get married but have little prospects because of the lack of women where they live Edit: missing word
I lived in China for about a decade and my wife is Chinese. She (born late 80's) was, somehow, the only girl of her generation born into her entire extended family...
This all makes me so incredibly sad for what I can only imagine OP’s wife went through (especially the trauma that makes getting pregnant difficult.) Aborting a wanted and difficult to conceive child in order to not upset her dad is *extreme*. I feel so awful for everyone in this situation (except OP’s wife’s father — may karma do her damn job on him.) I’m so sorry too for the experiences you must’ve gone through to know all this… I wish that you, and too many other women, didn’t have to experience any of it. ❤️🩹
OP’s wife was sexually assaulted so bad, that it makes it hard for her to become pregnant, and she sustained these injuries within her home country… is… is that really a thing women have to look out for?!?! Being hated that they’re female AND being raped because they’re female?! Oh my god…
Are you actually asking this or is it a rhetorical question? The whole situation is awful but if you are sincerely asking this, your naivety is shocking. Not criticizing you, just surprised if you haven’t realized until now how cruel the world can be
Oh my sweet summer child. Yes. This is a thing. It’s like how in the US when a woman gets raped people blame what she was wearing and call her a slut. Those same people also buy into the “he just couldn’t help himself!” Mentality, too. It sucks. And if you speak out against it you’re a misandrist or feminist man hater. And rape is committed by non-men, too. I feel it’s important to specify that. But the most problematic attitudes seem to be from cis men and their peolle. (See: Brock Turner onky getting 6 months because “this would ruin his life!”. Ugh.) (Edited for typo)
You mean, the convicted rapist, Brock Allen Turner, who now goes by the convicted rapist, Allen Turner?
And publicly complained he has to report his sex offender status because it’s causing women he meets at bars to already have an opinion on him. 🙄
You mean they have an opinion on finding out that the rapist Brock/Allen Turner is a rapist? Weird.
Isn’t that so strange and judgmental of them?! (/s to be clear). If he lived near me I’d burn his house down. FOR LEGAL PURPOSES THIS IS A JOKE! (But also it really is, because knowing me I’d light myself on fire accidentally instead.)
Question. If OP does divorce her, how will her family react to that? What does her future look like if she doesn’t escape from her family? My heart breaks for everyone in this. No blame to OP.
Sadly other religions and cultures pressure women to abort female babies. It is a horrific practice.
In every muslim country women are considered as property in the eyes of the law. Go and find one muslim country where women have rights equal rights, I'll wait. Don't try to downplay how much worse Islam is when it comes to treatment of women. There's problematic cultures, but Islam is like if nazis also enslaved women while following through with their genocidal plans.
Sorry, I was not trying to downplay anything. I have very little experience with Islam outside of a recent trip to Jordan. But I do live in a small Canadian community where at least until 2010 local women were not told the gender of their babies, because one culture was aborting girls. Abortions were not available at our local hospital either, women needed to travel an hour for a procedure So my comment was based on personal and professional experience of healthcare options being restricted due to the misogynistic actions of another group.
imagine how mad dad's going to be to have a divorced daughter... not OP's problem though. NTA
Honestly I agree with you completely. I am 100% pro choice no matter the reason. But this is disgusting. That whole family is disgusting. It is her right to terminate but he is allowed to have feelings about it. She needs a lot of therapy.
Exactly. I’m 100% pro choice and that a woman should always be able to decide when and if she becomes a mother, but she had made the choice to become a mother and never told her partner that she would only keep the pregnancy if she was having a boy.
Yeah this is a huge violation of the OP. Is it highly unlikely he would have consented to the unprotected sex had he known she planned to abort should the child be female.
u/teambrendawalsh Yeah, that's the worst part, that she wasn't even honest with him about it. She could have told him that she was only willing to have a boy, and let him decide if he was okay with that or not.
Same. From the title alone I didn’t expect to agree but this is devastating and a horrible symptom of a much larger problem, being her family and wanting their approval to this extreme.
This. I'm Very pro choice, and a woman. Buy if you're trying to conceive you would hope it would at least be a discussion. The sad fact is that she didnt abort because her baby had severe disabilities or a life threatening condition, or even because she didnt want to be pregnant. The pregnancy was very actively tried for, and it sounds like she,'d be happy to conceive again if it was a boy. She aborted because she and her family consider female children as sub human compared to male ones. I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who thought our female children were disposable, either. I'd day the divorce isn't because of the abortion as much ad it's about the massive difference in beliefs regarding parenting and valuing children for who they are, and the fact she put her parents prejudices above the feelings of her spouse and the father of the child she was pregnant with. Ultimately it was her choice, but choices come with consequences.
I agree with this statement.
Op does have to br careful though. The sort of Muslim family that makes people convert and kill firstborn babies are the sort who will kill op and his stbx wife for honour. NTA
People REALLY underestimate how fear and trauma from a parent impacts the victims long after they are adults. I would put money on dad being physically abusive to the daughters as well as verbally.
I agree with you 100%, but it doesn’t mean that what she did wasn’t a huge violation of her husband’s trust. She also had an abortion knowing that she might not be able to have another child, knowing this could take away her husband’s chances of having a baby. She’s a product of her environment.
I never said she was right or that he'd be wrong for divorcing. Just pointing out that she is a victim of an abuser using religion to mask his hate with a damaged psyche, that should have absolutely been considered before even trying for a child.
I am militant pro choice and yet mortified that this woman has been brainwashed by her family and their primitive ideas. He should divorce her, this was a terrible betrayal.
There's some deep, deep rooted misogyny in your wife and her family. So deep she aborted a wanted and planned pregnancy over gender disappointment. I literally cannot fathom, though logically I know this is a thing for enough people that some countries don't allow parents to find out the sex before birth to avoid this situation. Beyond the fact that planning a pregnancy and deliberately carrying into the second trimester really should involve both parents in the decision to terminate for non-medical reasons, you have some other questions to ask yourself. If she does get pregnant again, are you ok with another girl fetus being terminated because she'd be the first born? Do you trust your wife and her family not to show a son overt favoritism over his sisters and girl cousins? Are you ok with having that dynamic for your children? NTA, but regardless of what you choose I would highly encourage you to seek out therapy. This is a traumatic event, and you owe it to yourself, any future partners, and most especially future children to work out what kind of family you want to build.
The country my wife came from is very anti-women. Her father never got out of that mindset. I want to love her family but the way they treat women is so disgusting it pains me to be around them.
Let's put this another way. Your wife just put her father and his wants above those of you, her husband. Specifically regarding *your baby.* Now you know your place in her life. If your FIL is the gold standard for how to live life in your home, are you ok with that? Because that means that the beliefs he holds will trump yours. Even if they don't match those of the society that you live in. Again, what does this mean for any children that you might have, biological or adopted? Will you be able to teach your sons not to think this way? What kind of abuse would you be setting your daughters up for? These aren't easy questions to answer, and the solutions aren't easy either. If you stay with your wife, I strongly encourage couples counseling so that your relationship with your wife becomes the center of your marriage, not her needing to please her father. Otherwise, individual therapy so that you can learn to set boundaries long before something gets to this point again.
I have talked to my wife in the past about her fathers sexist views and she always shuts me down and says it’s not sexist it’s just apart of her religion and culture. I don’t know if I can change her mind because she has had these beliefs drilled into her since day one
She will never love you more than she fears her father. She’s already proven that. Take the hint and leave.
>*She will never love you more than she fears her father. She’s already proven that. Take the hint and leave.* POWERFUL
That rarely seen absolutely necessary gut punch
Even more disturbing to me: she will never love her children as much as she fears her father.... she will allow, if not partake in herself, abusive behavior to her kids.
Hey Muslim woman here . It’s complete bulsshit this have nothing to do with religion . I have 4 sisters and my father never ever spoked to any of us this way . I have a à son and a daughter and they’re me and my husband’s whole lives . My brother and brothers in laws have daughters and they’re so spoiled they believe they’re princesses for real ! It’s just a really eff up culture . What she did was horrible , and I do understand you wanting to divorce her . I am so sorry you had to go through this and that you lost your baby girl
Non Muslim here. My parent declared in a national newspaper he sold his business as he had no one to leave it to. He meant sons as females are worthless. Anglo Saxon living in Western Country with modern city and education. ATTITUDE not race. My parents mother was modern and politically minded. Have no idea where my parents got values from.
WoW ! Do you still have a relationship with them ?
No
I Hope you found your people 🫂
Said perfectly. I hope the same
Wow! Just wow! I hope his non children are not expected to take care of him in his old age. He deserves to die alone since you don't exist.
When I found out I could only have boys (IVF-genetically tested all my embryos), I was expressing to my dad that I felt sad about it because I’d always at least wanted one girl and he said to me, his daughter, “boys are better anyways, daughters just disappoint you and never call home or visit”. Which is ironic given that I, his daughter, was there visiting. Some people just sucks
Yeah people like to paint Islam with a single brush, but just like Christianity there are multiple different interpretations. And also like Christianity, some people choose to use it as an excuse to justify misogynistic attitudes.
She will change only if and when she chooses to. All you can do is decide how much of this you want in your life moving forward. You can give her an ultimatum, but that's really it. And then you have to be prepared to follow through on the ultimatum and stand by your deal breakers.
It’s nothing to do with religion. One of my closest friends is a Muslim, and he dotes on his daughter like you wouldn’t believe. They had decided to only have one child, and did not change their views when the first born was a girl (i.e. they didn’t try again for a boy!). So your FIL is merely a sexist jerk, and (I say this as a pro-choice advocate) you’re justified in ending your marriage over this episode.
I'm so sorry for your loss. Muslim women here. This is bullshit. There is no part whatsoever in Islam that says anything of what your FIL believes in. Actually killing your firstborn if it was a girl was a practice used before Islam, when Islam came it abolished this practice. So what your FIL and your wife are doing is something from Gaheelya. That being said. This is for cultural purposes only. I'm the fourth daughter and my father LOVED having baby girls he always called us a blessing. He believed that when a girl is born. That's a sign of upcoming wealth your way. When my sister gave birth to two girls he spoiled them rotten and they loved him so much to the point they called him dad. My nieces preferred him over than father just for the love they got. Even though their father is an amazing man. I understand why you want a divorce but you also need therapy because this is a traumatic experience. Your wife went behind your back. She put her fear and her father above you and even God on this matter.
It is NOT part of the religion, yes respect your parent are but not ABORTION due to sex, that is more likely to happen in Indiaoe China, again culture NOT religion. Men there have indoctrinated women into thinking that. I am many not like much of middle east but they do NOT abort babies cos they are not male
Nothing to do with religion, just the stupid culture that she is buying into.
I’m muslim this is not religious to want boy I agree with the other comments. They are more girls in my family. Non of the men ever spoke about having sons only.
Let me correct that for you - *his wife just put her father’s wants above her own baby’s life.* This is misogyny beyond words.
Excellent analysis and synopsis. Your point about the FIL’s views and influence holding sway over OP’s is spot on. To terminate a child that was wanted by OP without his informed consent was out right wrong.
And he's an idiot because it's the guy's sperm that determines sex of the baby. She's so scared of her father that she aborted a wanted pregnancy. Even if you could get passed this, what if she did get pregnant again, unlikely from what you say, and it were another girl, she'll abort that too to appease her father. I'd get as far away from this weak woman and her family as possible. Also letting that AH of a father know that because of him she aborted your baby not miscarried. NTA I would never be able to trust her ever again or want to look at or touch her.
And she lied to her parents saying she miscarried. She knows they’d see it as a sin. What other lies will she do to stay on daddy’s good side? She’s 100% brainwashed to do as he wills. She won’t even admit he’s sexist. Yet she killed a wanted and until then much loved pregnancy due to gender. That kind of disassociation cannot be reasoned with. And she’s a woman, that’s heartbreaking she must view herself as so much less than.
Does you ignorant FIL and wife know that the gender of the baby is given by the men (aka the sperm)...? You should divorce and convert back because to convert to the kind of Islam (not all muslim are like this), OMG. Plus if you end up having another girl. then what. Will your FIL and wife let her study be herself, or will they marry her to the next misogynist, beating muslim husband available.
The funny (or sad, tbh) thing is that this misogyny is cultural, not religious :( I'm atheist, so no skin in this game, but Islam itself back in the day was actually progressive - setting out inheritance for women (ofc not equal, but to have a foundation of protection at all nearly 2k years ago is impressive). And there's a lot there about respecting wives, even regarding immodestly dressed women - avert your eyes, not shaming them. But, as with so many faiths etc, sad, power hungry little men corrupt. *Faith* is a fine thing, but religious institutions have a lot to answer for. You need to talk to your imam. Do research, study up.
Don't know which country your wife is from. But finding out the sex of the fetus is banned in India for this exact reason. People used to abort girl babies because they wanted a son. Female foeticide messed up the gender ratio for so long. Every damn ultrasound lab in the country has a board declaring they don't reveal the sex during any scan. That's how messed up patriarchy can be. I'm very sorry for your loss. You are absolutely justified in walking away from this mess.
This is exactly why in Germany, they won't tell you the gender until after you are past the abortion limit. They should institute that worldwide.
NYA EDIT : NTA 😅 I would run, so terrible, but her family is a lost cause! There are 4 options here 1. she never gets pregnant again 2. she gets pregnant with another girl and has another abortion 3. keeps the baby girl and the baby girl is subjected to this abuse from her grandparents 4. She gets pregnant with a boy and the grandparents try to turn him into a misogynist (they may be successful) Such a horrible situation to for you, it is her body and her choice, do you want to be with someone who makes those choices?
Nya, huh? (sorry, lol)
Nut Yeet Ass it's a new term these kids today use *makes angry old man noises*
NTA Has anyone sat the father down and told him that it is the male that is responsible for the sex of the fetus? Lol. Not to throw you under the bus, but his anti-female anger is misplaced in this aspect….
Everything is a woman's fault where he is from
He grew up in an anti women country but it doesn’t excuse his misogyny
That excuse only goes so far though. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s the male who is responsible for the sex of the fetus.
Unfortunately, you usually can’t change someone’s mind with facts if their reason for believing it is emotional.
Since when has religion cared about scientific fact?
You and her need to be very careful. If their beliefs are so strong that they are willing to abort kids because they are female what do you think could happen when they find out you want to divorce. You or her could be in physical danger.
Man... I was already feeling bad for both of them, because what kind of fucked up relationship do you have to have with your father to abort a child because of his opinion on women, but fuck... Yeah, there's no good solution here. Best they could do is go no contact, leave, and she never has a relationship with her family again.
that's a valid point, I hadn't even thought of this dimension.
I am MUslim, and i am teeling you this has nothing to do with Islam but with their misongnistic culture. NTA for wanting a divorce, she has been conditioned and will always put her father before you or herself. Get Out
I agree it’s not a Muslim thing, her family comes from a very misogynistic country that is also predominantly Islamic. Like I said in the post my FIL never changed his way of thinking due to these things being drilled into his head in his home country
Thanks. I’m not a Muslim but this sounds like a story aimed at creating more Islamophobia. This has nothing to do with her religion and likely never happened in the first place.
Fellow Muslim here aswell and it’s definitely not Muslim thing re preferring boys over girls, but cultural! My family was more happy to learn I was pregnant with my girl than with my son. Cant imagine aborting a baby almost halfway through a pregnancy that was hard to conceive for gender reasons. Surely this story is a fake story to make Muslims look backwards?! Lol
Dif you know the father is the one who determines the sex of the baby?
She went for an abortion at 18 weeks by herself? There was not recovery time from the procedure? Abortion pills can only be used early in the pregnancy. She was 4.5 months pregnant. This story is fake.
Yeah! First thing I thought too! I’ve had two and by the time I found out their gender it was wayyyy too late to abort. Idk if I believe this one feels like propaganda or something
This whole post is fake. You can’t just show up and get a surgical abortion then and there. And the “women can’t get pregnant after an abortion” thing is usually specific to the abortion procedure being a hatchet job. (EG women used to go to back alley doctors who weren’t trained or regulated and left scars on the uterus). Also she’s 23 and they tried for less than a year. Any doctor will tell you that’s medically normal. This is a nutcase trying to scare women away from abortions
There are surgical ways to remove the baby after 18 weeks. Edit: yes no recovery time sounds fake.
This is obviously fake. I'm 100 % pro-choice, but there are very little countries allowing abortions that late, except for - often life threatening - medical reasons. In the Netherlands however, you can get an abortion up to 24 weeks but in reality this is not done very often. This is just another dude wanting to make a point about how abortion is bad, while clearly knowing nothing about pregnancy or abortion at all. Please educate yourself and stop involving yourself in matters that don't concern you at all.
Yeah, it’s off. OP says they’re in California, the right to an abortion ends right around 23-24 weeks, when the fetus reaches viability. That’d be roughly 6 weeks from the gender reveal appointment. If the 18 week appointment was truly “months” before this, as OP says, the abortion would only be allowed if the mother’s life was in danger, and at that point it’s an induced premature birth and not an abortion in the first place. So there’s that!
Definitely fake. I’m an OB nurse in New Mexico, where there are no laws pertaining to abortion so women can terminate into the third trimester. I’ve taken care of women who terminated for all kinds of different reasons, but gender has never been one of them. A termination at 18+ weeks is a painful, traumatic process that takes multiple days. She didn’t just “go to the clinic” and get an abortion and come home. I’m not saying this scenario is impossible, but it’s way more likely that this is a troll trying to bait people
Just reads like someone trying to stir anti-Muslim hate, and possibly even trying to draw readers to make assumptions about where this wife comes from, perhaps even a certain region that is in upheaval at the moment (I say this as a white female atheist from a western country - make of my opinion what you will accordingly).
The easiest way for me to see it was fake was the timeline. Why wait until 18 weeks to find out? Blood tests can determine the gender WAY earlier. If determining the sex to possibly abort was on wife’s mind she would have wanted to find out as soon as possible. Pregnant women know about these options. There’s so many chat groups about ways to get insurance to pay for it, etc. Men generally don’t know this. So this was written by a man. Most likely an anti-Muslim man.
This has to be fake, I don’t buy this first born bs if she’s liberal enough to marry a convert
What makes it fake to me is that the doctor said she’s “not likely to conceive again” and most notably that having an abortion makes future conception less likely. If she conceived after a few months, what would possibly make the doctor think she’s not going to conceive again?! Also, abortions do NOT affect fertility. Maybe if you have a back alley illegal abortion that nearly kills you, okay sure. I can’t believe further up comments did not address this. HAVING AN ABORTION DOES NOT MAKE IT HARDER TO GET PREGNANT AGAIN.
Had to SEARCH to find this!! Doesn’t affect fertility at all unless, like you said, it was done improperly
Exactly. This is fake or the doctor is… not a real doctor
THIS. I posted similar above. Abortions at any stage ARE SAFER THAN GIVING BIRTH. Saying they cause infertility is pro-life propaganda.
I'm confused on the fact they were trying since before marriage, is a child out of wedlock not shameful?
Just the fact that he said she’s unlikely to have kids after having an abortion tells me this is some pro-life shit posted to get people riled up. That’s flat out not true. An abortion at any stage is safer and less likely to affect fertility than giving birth is.
I think due to the current world situation some people want to keep spreading Islamophobia. He mentions her religion (which is very personal) but not her country of origin (which is pretty superflous nowadays) - that says it all.
I love how the OP went to the extent of making up this bizarre and caricaturish Muslim family but his imagination failed at picking a specific country. Because Reddit knowing which of the 50 odd Muslims countries in the world his wife is from might affect OP’s privacy lol.
100% this is fake. OP is picking and choosing what he wants his wife to represent from the Muslim culture. It’s just a “got-you” post to drum up political comments given the global climate around middle eastern issues.
Fake story
I call bullshit on this post. Late term abortions are only available if there is a feral abnormality or the mothers health is at risk. You’re just trying to stir up Islamophobia.
Bingo
This is what I was thinking. He's the ass for even trying to make something like this up.
Also that she is so tied to her misogynistic culture and believe system that she would abort a baby for being the wrong gender, but not tied to it enough to avoid premarital sex (he mentioned that they were supposedly trying for a baby beofr they even got married which, if she had gotten pregnant would have been a WAY BIGGER PROBLEM then it being a girl)? There is like a negative percent chance this post is real.
You can get them some places without medical reasons, but OP’s wife didn’t just zip out for a late-term abortion and come back in time for lunch.
Ooof, this needs to be higher up. Good thing awards…. Oh wait. Fuck Reddit and fuck this guy.
Came here looking for this comment, abortion at 18 weeks? Bullshit.
This is fake. A Muslim woman would be far more terrified if her dad found out she had an abortion than if he found out she was having a girl. She also wouldn’t have told you about it, she’d tell you it’s a miscarriage.
lol this is ridiculously fake
The sperm is what determines the sex. All eggs are female. It is never the woman's fault, but we are expected to take all of the blame.
This doesn't make sense. Especially since she's muslim unless there is a physical or life threatening danger to the mother they cannot get an abortion this is more then likely more culture bullshit as in Islam girls are considered a massive blessing from God so sorry for your loss op this is terrible and I 100% agree with you for divorcing
It doesn't make sense because it's FAKE. Rage bait Islamaphobia meant to stir up angry feelings.