Feasible To Monitor The Womb?

Proposals to curb sex-selective abortion should be made with due deliberations even as social realities cripple India’s attempts to improve a skewed sex ratio.

- Nikita Lamba

It has been five years since the 2011 Census revealed the dismal sex ratio in India, its worst since Independence: That of 943 females per 1,000 males. Shockingly, child sex ratio (of those between 0-6 years of age) was lesser: 919 females per 1,000 males. Five years after the census, India is still grappling with this social anomaly despite having taken various measures to stem it.

Stirring a hornet’s nest, the Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi recently suggested that sex determination be made mandatory and each pregnancy be registered and tracked till the time of birth. Speaking at the sidelines of an event, Maneka said her ministry had sent a proposal for the same to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare under whose purview the Act falls. However, this proposal was soon retracted by the minister. When Tehelka contacted the Ministry of Women and Child Development, it defended Maneka’s statement by saying that the Act (PCPNDT) does not come under its purview. Why then did the minister make such a statement without proper deliberation?

For starters, her statement completely negates the premise of the existing law – Pre Conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act 1994 (PCPNDT Act) – that bans sex determination unless it arises out of medical complications. The Act was enacted in the context of rising sex-selective abortions due to the ready availability of ultrasounds. “Sex-selective abortions rose into prominence because ultrasounds would identify the female foetus and parents who preferred a son began terminating the pregnancy,” says Mohan Rao, social medicine and community health professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Through banning sex determination, the Act was also clamping down on medical practitioners who aided such abortions.