A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15)

Gendercide somewhere in the recesses of my sub-conscious, I know it is happening. From time to time, the horror rises to the level of my conscious awareness and unable to bear the reality, I quickly move on, burying the obscenity once again. After watching Evan Grae Davis’ documentary “The Three Deadliest Words in the World: It’s a Girl” the sheer magnitude of the reality cannot be contained in the caverns of my sub-conscious. I want to weep, wail, shout and scream! Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific sex and it is happening in epic proportions to women all over the world. It’s a Girl focuses on the hundreds of millions of girls who are being killed in India and China.  The numbers are staggering! Between the abortion of female fetuses, infanticide, neglect, and murder women are being killed in incomprehensible numbers. Lest we think this only happens in the developing world, the Canadian Medical Association Journal is calling for an end to sex identification via ultrasound in order to curb the practice of selective abortion in ethnic communities in Canada. 

Evan Grae Davis reveals that, “More girls have been killed in the last fifty years simply because they are girls than all the people who were killed in the first and second World Wars combined.  More girls have been killed in the last decade than in all the major genocides  of the 20th century combined.”  It’s a Girl is not an easy documentary to watch but a vital film to watch.  Below you can watch the documentary’s director Evan Grae Davis discuss his own experience of making the film.  

After watching the documentary, I wonder what we can do to help put an end to this horrendous atrocity. We celebrate the stories of those who refused to turn a blind eye and stepped in at considerable risk to save their neighbours from the Nazis and we have prayed that we too would have demonstrated similar courage. So, why then do we allow gendercide to continue?  How is it that this atrocity continues to be relegated to our collective subconscious? Cultural change is not easy, especially if we are unwilling to look at what is happening. Bearing witness is just the beginning. If you are reading this blog, then you have the wherewith all to download and watch the movie ($12.99 on iTunes). Then we will need to be about the work of removing the log from our own eyes, so that we can begin to help our neighbours.