Save The Girl Child

Since the late 1970s when the technology for sex determination first came into being, sex selective abortion has unleashed a saga of horror. Experts are calling it "sanitised barbarism". Demographic trends indicate India is fast heading towards a million female foetuses aborted each year. Although foetal sex determination and sex selection is a criminal offence in India, the practice is rampant. Private clinics with ultrasound machines are doing brisk business. Everywhere, people are paying to know the sex of an unborn child. And paying more to abort the female child. The technology has even reached remote areas through mobile clinics. Dr. Puneet Bedi, obstetrician and specialist in foetal medicine, says these days he hardly sees a family with two daughters. People are getting sex determination done even for the first child, he says. Spreading like a virus A recent media workshop on the issue of sex selection and female foeticide brought home the extent of the problem. Held in Agra in February, the workshop was organised by UNICEF, Business Community Foundation, and the Centre for Advocacy and Research. Doctors, social scientists, researchers, activists, bureaucrats, journalists told their stories of what they were doing to fight the problem. If the 1991 Census showed that two districts had a child sex ratio (number of girls per thousand boys) less than 850; by 2001 it was 51 districts. Child rights activist Dr. Sabu George says foeticide is the most extreme form of violence against women. "Today a girl is several times more likely to be eliminated before birth than die of various causes in the first year. Nature intended the womb to be a safe space. Today, doctors have made it the most unsafe space for the female child," he says. He believes that doctors must be held responsible — "They have aggressively promoted the misuse of technology and legitimised foeticide." Researchers and scholars use hard-hitting analogy to emphasise the extent of the problem. Dr. Satish Agnihotri, senior IAS officer and scholar who has done extensive research on the issue, calls the technology "a weapon of mass destruction". Dr. Bedi refers to it as genocide: "More than 6 million killed in 20 years. That's the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust." Related issues Foeticide is also one of the most common causes of maternal mortality. The sex of the foetus can be determined only around 14-16 weeks. This means most sex selective abortions are late. Abortion after 20 weeks is illegal in India. Donna Fernandes, Vimochana, a Bangalore-based NGO, says foeticide is related to a host of other social problems as varied as privatisation of medical education and dowry. Karnataka has the highest number of private medical colleges. Healthcare turning commodity has led to terrifying consequences. Adds Fernandes, "Wherever green revolution has happened foeticide has increased. With more landholdings and wealth inheritance dowry has increased. Daughters are considered an economic liability. Today, people don't want their daughters to study higher — a more well-educated groom will demand more dowry."

Ironically, as income levels increase, sex determination and sex selection is increasing. The most influential pockets have the worst sex ratios. Take Punjab for instance — 793 girls for every 1,000 boys against the national figure of 927. Or South Delhi — one of the most affluent localities of the Capital — 760. According to Satara-based advocate Varsha Deshpande, small families have come at the cost of the girl child. In patriarchal States like Rajasthan where infanticide has existed for centuries, this new technology has many takers. Meena Sharma, 27, television journalist from Rajasthan, who did a series of sting operations across four States last year, says, "Today, people want to pretend they are modern and that they do not discriminate between a girl and a boy. Yet, they will not hesitate to quietly go to the next village and get an ultrasound done." Sharma was determined to expose the widespread malpractice. She travelled with pregnant women as "decoys" across four States and more than 13,000 km to do a series of sting operations. She says more than 100 doctors of the 140 they met were ready to do a sex selective abortion, some as late as the seventh month. "We were shocked at the greed we saw — doctors did not even ask why we wanted to abort, far from dissuading us from doing so," she says. What's the solution? Varsha Deshpande says the PCPNDT Act (Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques — Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) is very well conceived and easy to use. "We have done 17 sting operations across Maharashtra and got action taken against more than 25 doctors," says Varsha. She adds that other laws for violence against women such as dowry, domestic violence, rape, put the control in the hands of the police which is biased. Therefore, even though the law exists, offenders get away. This law preventing sex determination and sex selection is much easier to use, she says. Regulating technology Akhila Sivadas, Centre for Advocacy and Research, Delhi, agrees that the law is very well conceived and the need of the hour is legal literacy to ensure the law is implemented. "The demand and supply debate has been going on for some time. Doctors say there is a social demand and they are only fulfilling it. They argue that social attitudes must change. However, in this case supply fuels demand. Technology will have to be regulated. Technology in the hands of greedy, vested interests, cannot be neutral. There is a law to prevent misuse and we must be able to use it," she says. CFAR is currently partnering with local NGOs in six districts of Rajasthan to help ensure implementation of the law. On the "demand" side, experts such as Dr. Agnihotri argue that women's participation in workforce, having disposable incomes and making a contribution to larger society will make a difference to how women are seen. Youth icons and role models such as Sania Mirza are making an impact, he says. Others feel there needs to be widespread visible contempt and anger in society against this "genocide" — "the kind we saw against the Nithari killings," says Dr. Bedi. "Today

nobody can say female foeticide is not their problem." Time we all did our bit to help save the girl child. Time's running out.

In many regions of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan; the sex ratio of girls for every 1000 boys was mere 745 or 754 or at 779 respectively. In a desire for a male child many female foetuses are aborted every year and now this has become a trend. We can simply make out the effects of this trend by knowing the fact that in many families the boys have only brothers, no sisters. Since the number of girls is falling in the rural areas, so, in many villages parents are unable to find a suitable match for their sons. Recently in a distant village of Rajasthan a bride was married to not one or two but to eight grooms and all of them were brothers. It is definitely a pathetic situation where raising a girl child is so difficult for these people as they consider her a ‘burden’ and ‘troublesome’. Earlier when we did not have the technology to know about the sex of the foetus, the girl child used to be killed by putting a sand bag on her face or strangulating her or some poison used to be applied on the breasts of the mother. What adds more to it is that neither mothers nor their family members used to express any kind of sorrow on the deaths of their baby daughters. Probably they had no choice themselves but to submit to society’s pressures. Now the scenario has changed. With the help of new technologies one can easily detect the sex of the foetus. So the practice of female infanticide has been replaced by female foeticide. Many of us must be thinking that such practice is prevalent only among illiterate people who consider the boy child as "kuldeepak". But this is not true. The recent incident in which a lady died after giving birth to a male child is an eye-opener. Ravi and his wife had two daughters, but they both wanted a boy, which led the wife to go for nine sex determination tests. After getting eight pregnancies terminated, against doctor’s advice, she conceived for the ninth time and thank god this time it was a male child. But she died just two days after giving birth to a baby boy. Now the boy is 10 and the two daughters are 23 and 21 years old. (source:unfpa*) According to a survey an increase of 28.32per cent has been witnessed in the number of working women in last two decades. But at the same time, what is more shameful is that the subsequent increase has also been registered in the number of pregnancy terminations or abortions by working women. The reasons stated behind this practice are: They want a small family; they want better career prospects; they want a male child and they do not want daughters. Many of these women justify sex selection and abortions because they think that if they deliver a baby boy then they are looked upon in the family. Also, they do not want their daughters to suffer the hardships a girl has to face. Besides that they find themselves unable to afford

the dowry expenses the parents of a girl child have to bear. “Since maintaining the high living standards has become so expensive, who will save for her?” say modern mothers. These are the ‘serious’ reasons these literate and modern women give for not giving birth to a girl child. But they are forgetting that had their mothers thought the same way, they would have also met the same fate. According to pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostics techniques (prohibition and sex selection) Act, which came into effect on 14th February 2003 as a replacement of the pre-natal diagnostic techniques (regulation and misuse amendment) Act 2002, that said any kind of sex selection in pre or post pregnancy is prohibited. Other Articles by Kriti Surjan • •

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more >> If any person seeks the help for sex selection, he/she can face an imprisonment of three years and can be required to pay a fine of Rs 50,000. If any doctor is found guilty of this malpractice, he can face suspension of his registration by the state medical council. But these acts seem not to be casting much effect on the dark shades of human deeds. An estimate says that the industry of ultrasound and sonography, sex-selection and female foeticide is of around 500 crore alone in India. And this is being run through small clinics, midwives, unregistered doctors and big hospitals. They conduct the abortions very secretly and many a times they become the reason for the death of many women. Or sometimes women have to suffer irreparable damages because of their unsafe methods of conducting the practice. But nobody dares to speak against this social evil, except those who know the seriousness of the situation. So where are we heading? A land where there would be no girl. But don’t you think without woman, life would cease to exist on this earth