“In India, we have inherited the cultural legacy of having
strong son preference among all communities, religious groups, and citizens of
varied socioeconomic backgrounds. Patrilocality, patrilineage, and patriarchal
attitudes manifest in women and girls having a subordinate position in the
family, discrimination in property rights, and low paid or unpaid jobs. Women’s
work is limited to household duties. At the time of marriage, dowry is given by
the bride’s family to the groom for shouldering ‘the burden of the bride. In
many communities as a custom female babies are killed immediately after birth
either by the mother or by elderly women of the family to relieve themselves
from the life of humiliation, rejection, and suffering.“
Social discrimination against women results in systematic
neglect of women’s health, from the womb to the tomb. Female infanticide and
female foeticide are widely practiced in many States. The overall sex ratio, at
present, is favorable to women in Kerala. But in Kerala also, in the 0-6 age
group, the sex ratio was 963 as per the 2001 census. Out of a total 36.5 lakh,
0-6 Age group population 18.6 lakhs were male babies and 17.9 lakhs female
babies. Thus, 79760 female babies and infants were missing in 2001 in Kerala.
This masculinization of sex ratio is a result of selective abortion of female
fetuses after the use of ultrasound techniques of sex determination.
The reason for female infanticide can be linked with the evil
of dowry,
hypergamy, prevailing in our society. A more degrading and disparaging feature
of society has seen existing for the last two decades is the immense love for
male children and the elimination of female fetuses. With the invention of new
technologies to monitor the Toetar health, it was expected to be used for
taking care of the health of the unborn child but became terminator of a female
fetus. Are female fetus being deliberately eliminated or aborted, is the
question? To a great extent, yes! is the answer.
Are the technologies (ultrasonography, amniocentesis, chorion
villi biopsy, foetoscopy, maternal serum analysis, etc.) assisting in
elimination? Again the answer is; yes, to a great extent.
The answer is well supported by the trends that surfaced in
the 2001 Census. The following statistics reveal the truth:
|
Census |
Girl child/ male child ratio in 0-6 age group |
|
1981 |
962 Girls/1000 Boys |
|
1991 |
945 Girls/1000 Boys |
|
2001 |
927 Girls/1000 Boys |
Biologically girls are stronger and with all the thrust on
the well-being of the girl child, the 1981 trends should have at least
continued, but in the past 20 years, the ratio has dropped considerably.
While there can be no moral or ethical justification for
foeticide still, it continues to be practiced. In fact, sex determination which
was mainly restricted to metros only now is prevalent in villages as well. If
sex determination tests are allowed to proliferate, and the elimination of
female fetuses allowed, society should be ready to pay for this sin, after
around two decades.
The greatest supporters of a child (whether male or female)
are the natural parents. If a girl has a father who loves her and grants all
her fundamental rights that girl is inviolable. Fathers often provide material
comforts but deny daughters their right to choose their life partner. A few
lines from a poem come to the mind when one thinks of the way a girl fears her
father—
(From Lord Ullin’s Daughter)
For a daughter, there can be no greater misery, than to know
that her father does not support her. If she was an unwanted child, the despair
is compounded. To go through life and realize that she was thrust on her
unwilling parents, is a fate much worse than death. What can be more disgracing
than the feeling of nothing more than a contraceptive failure?
Some months back, Delhi University Students and teachers came
out of their classrooms to support the amendment to the Pre-Natal Diagnostic
(PNDT) Bill which was tabled in Parliament, recommending more stringent
measures against doctors who selectively abort female fetuses.
The amended PNDT Bill suggests certain important
modifications in the existing 1994 PNDT Act which make it mandatory not only to
register all kinds of techniques but to maintain records of every such scan. It
also enhances the penalties for violation of the act. Of course, a powerful
lobby of doctors resisted the amendments.
Since 1979, when the first private sex determination clinic
was set up in Punjab, such clinics have proliferated rapidly. By the early
eighties, such diagnostic centers had mushroomed even in rural areas,
conducting sex determination for a few hundred rupees.
According to Saheli’ a Delhi-based women’s group, between
1978 and 1982, 78000 female fetuses were aborted. During 1987-88, an estimated
13000 sex determination tests were conducted in seven Delhi clinics only. Today
the North. The Western States where such clinics had first appeared to have the
lowest sex ratio. Punjab has 793 girls for every 1000 boys, Haryana 820
girls/1000 boys, and Delhi follows with 845 girls/1000 boys.
The decline in the ratio in urban areas is more than twice
that in the rural areas. It is true that women should have the right to abort
their unwanted fetuses, but if the technology is being used only to eliminate
the female fetus, then it should be questionable.
The amendment to PNDT Bill is one of the means towards an
end. We must take a nationwide campaign against gender discrimination and inequities.
The root cause for the elimination of female fetuses is to be traced unless the
evil of forced marriages, dowry, illiteracy among the females are done away
with the lives of women will not improve. Banning prenatal sex determination
might add a feather in the caps of rights activists; it will not materially
improve the lives of women. A social awakening for true respect to the girls is
required, a lot of honest hard work with full political ‘will’ in this field
can only solve the problem.
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