Honor killings.

Every day, more reports about this taboo subject surface in the media. And every time I read a story about an honor killing, I thank God that my daughters and I live in this country at this time.

In places such as Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey, honor killings are a hush-hush tradition. In cultures where women often have less value than cattle and honor means everything, women have become the scapegoats of values gone mad.

In an honor killing, a male family member kills the female family member who has shamed the family. By destroying her, he supposedly returns honor to the family.

Women can be killed for such outrageous things as making eye contact with a man or being raped.

Though hard statistics can be difficult to come by, an estimated 60 women are killed in honor killings each year in Turkey. About 20 honor killings occur each year in Jordan.

In the most recent case to shake my faith in humankind, a Jordanian brother smothered his sister for becoming pregnant by her former husband. A judge gave the man a mere six months in jail, pointing out that the man was clearly enraged at the woman for dishonoring the family.

Of course, these "traditions" are not new. But now, in this age of international media and world economics, it's more difficult to turn a blind eye to the devalued state of women in other cultures.

During the past 20 years in India, there have been an estimated 10 million "missing female births." These are females who were killed either in utero or shortly after their birth. The British Medical Journal Lancet reported earlier this year that by the year 2020, the male/female gap in India will be 43 million.

In China, as a result of the stringent one-child policy and a cultural preference toward men, the country has a dramatic shortage of females. The Chinese government has predicted that by the year 2020, men will outnumber women by 300 million.

Worldwide, there are 100 million missing girls who should have been born but were not. Fifty million would have been Chinese, and 43 million would have been Indian.

In the fascinating book "Burned Alive," author Souad recalls her childhood in a small West Bank village. Souad recalls her mother giving birth and then smothering any female babies born to her. Later, Souad's family orders that Souad be killed - an honor killing. The attempt to burn her to death failed, and Souad lived to tell her story.

Of course, honor killings don't happen among every family, and they aren't a common occurrence. But they do happen. And the sad state of women in certain cultures is hardly a secret.

As America ventures into business with burgeoning economies such as India, are we inadvertently condoning such attitudes? Will we do business with anyone, regardless of the human-rights horrors happening there?

And here at home, do we American women really grasp what we have and recognize that we have a responsibility to protect it? Have we become so enthralled with the brainless activities of hotel heiresses that we forget that women have not always enjoyed such freedoms as we do?

Each time I learn about another honor killing or an arranged marriage between a child and a man, I feel relief that my children do not face such horrors. And it's certainly not lost on me that in many of these cultures, I would be considered a failure as a woman to have "given" my husband only girls.

So, I talk to our daughters. At 9 and 5, I get a lot of blank stares. But I think it's important that they learn that they have responsibility. I don't want them to take their lives and their freedoms for granted. I want them to understand that the freedoms they enjoy as women and Americans were hard fought.

I know I'm not the only one afraid that the highly sexualized, vapid culture of Hollywood party girls is doing damage to American girls - girls who don't realize that their counterparts in other parts of the world live with unimaginable oppression.

I once heard Oprah Winfrey say that women born in the United States are automatically the luckiest women in the world. She's absolutely right. We are. I hope we don't forget it, and I also hope that someday, women in other cultures will be able to share the same fate.

Lynn Taylor Rick is a Journal staff writer. Contact her at 394-8414 or lynn.taylorrick@rapidcityjournal.com.