It is not often discussed in India that there was a time, not too far into the past, when the doctors from the famous All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) performed and promoted sex-selective abortions as an effective and ethical method to address India’s population problem. Some of them even suggested that “the couple keeps on reproducing just to have a son”, and prenatal determination of sex would put an end to this “unnecessary fecundity”.
After sex selective abortions got too big a problem to ignore, the government banned the practice, although never enforced the ban properly. It is said that western agencies knowingly poured money into the programme that introduced technology using which female foetuses were aborted in the name of population control.
The flagship campaign of the Union Government’s ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), named Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP or Save daughter, Educate daughter) is trying now to address a declining child sex ratio — 919 females per thousand males in 2011– by focusing on the worst-performing states across the country. Earlier this month, the ministry announced a substantial expansion of the scheme, now covering one-fourth of the country. Revitalising the implementation of the Pre-Conception & Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act which prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of a foetus is a main component of BBBP. However, in the last decade, only 206 doctors have been convicted by courts across the country under the Act.
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