NEW DELHI (AFP) – India’s first woman president was sworn into office Wednesday and promised to fight for the rights of women and an end to the widespread practice of aborting female foetuses.

AFP adds:

India loses an average of 7,000 girls every day through abortions because of a traditional preference for sons, according to a Unicef report last year.
Abortions have also resulted in a severely skewed gender ratio in India, where there are only 927 females for every 1,000 males — far lower than the worldwide average of 1,050 females.