The minister suggested making prenatal sex determination mandatory for all pregnancies to avoid sex selective abortions. Doctors and women’s rights activists on what this will mean in practice.
New Delhi: How do we improve the low status of girl children in India, or even ensure their existence and survival once the technologies that enable sex-selective abortion are widespread? On Monday, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi presented a novel if problematic proposal, arguing that making prenatal sex determination compulsory for all pregnant women would mean less sex selective abortions in the country. Once a foetus is discovered to be female, it can be tracked to birth and given adequate nutrients. While the ministry has since backtracked somewhat in the face of vociferous opposition to this proposal, there are also those who continue to believe that this suggestion has some validity.
Sex selective abortion, and the question of India’s “missing women” as termed by Amartya Sen, has become a major topic of contention over the years. The 1991 Census of India showed the child sex ratio (of children aged 0-6) was 941 girls for every 1000 boys. In 2001, this number had fallen to 927. The Census of 2011 continued the worrying trend, with the ratio dropping to 914. While some areas, particularly the more prosperous north-west of the country, have always had poor ratios, what is surprising is that the numbers are dropping in areas that were more equal in this regard in previous Censuses: states like Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have seen a decline in their child sex ratios. Meanwhile, India’s overall sex ratio is going up due to the increasing life expectancy of women rather than more female births.
Please click here to read more.