Vietnam struggles with high abortion rates as consequence of gender selection: ‘people have to rely on their sons’
- Vietnam has the second-highest abortion rate in the world, according to a UN estimate, with girls accounting for most of the aborted fetuses
- Hundreds of thousands of fetuses have been buried by a woman who has devoted her life to maintaining the cemetery where they are laid to rest
Located beside rice paddies in Soc Son district on the northern outskirts of Hanoi, Doi Coc Cemetery is a home for those who never had a chance to live.
Visitors to the cemetery pass through a wall filled with small clay pots before arriving at a cold, abandoned house. Inside, there are two 400-litre freezers, containing about 300 fetuses. Outside, you see tightly packed rows of graves.
According to Vietnamese tradition, the dead should be buried for at least three years, after which their bones are exhumed and placed in a small clay pot. These small pots are also used to bury children who die prematurely.
All the graves in the cemetery are for mass burials. Some contain up to 10,000 fetuses.
The size of the fetus dictates how many can be buried at once. One particular grave in the centre of the cemetery contains as many as 30,000.