Internet search engines block ads for sex selection abortion in India

[Michie]

Under heavy pressure from the government of India, the operators of world's leading internet search engines have agreed to block advertisements for sex selection abortion.

Continued below.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=29467

 

[pdudgeon]

an interesting topic!
apparently this trend is a real one in parts of India, and the results are leaving an inbalance of more boys than girls.
This is another part of the death culture that is rearing it's ugly head world wide.

 

[MikeK]

I think there are almost always better ways to encourage healthy and desirable behaviors than to resort to censorship.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

The OP is misleading. They are blocking ads (not searches) for sex selection services and giving warnings to users who they determine are using the searches to find such services.

I'm sorry but this is a little scary actually.

Third party organizations shouldn't be used as arms of the government. Especially in information distribution.

This is done by governments all over the world and isn't new. Google restricts access to all kinds of things for China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and various other governments.

I be willing to bet a modest amount of money that most people on this board would not be so kind to what these various countries are trying to suppress

 

[pdudgeon]

I think there are almost always better ways to encourage healthy and desirable behaviors than to resort to censorship.

certainly there are better ways--the truth being one of them.
but when people won't listen to truth and are willing to believe lies, then stronger measures have to be enacted for their own safety.
or in this case so that they don't kill their own culture.

 

[MikeK]

certainly there are better ways--the truth being one of them.
but when people won't listen to truth and are willing to believe lies, then stronger measures have to be enacted for their own safety.
or in this case so that they don't kill their own culture.

Right. The same argument used by so many who restricted speech and expression in the name of protecting "culture". The Soviets, the Chinese, so many greats. I tend to think that if you can't convince people that your culture is the best through reason and argument and have to resort to censorship, your ideas of "culture" aren't all that great.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

certainly there are better ways--the truth being one of them.
but when people won't listen to truth and are willing to believe lies, then stronger measures have to be enacted for their own safety.
or in this case so that they don't kill their own culture.

Well, in this case, the people setting what is the "truth" and what is "killing the culture" is the government of India.

Since about half the people on this board don't even trust the democratically elected government of their own country I don't know how you can can make this statement with a straight face.

 

[imind]

this is a sign of much greater problems, like why the great need to abort one gender over the other to begin with...

 

[pdudgeon]

this is a sign of much greater problems, like why the great need to abort one gender over the other to begin with...

stating the obvious...fewer people tend to produce fewer babies.
and in many (not all) countries women are still seen as second class citizens, and thus not as valuable for producing the GNP.