Elimination of 'Female Foetus'

 Elimination of 'Female Foetus'

(Murder of Unborn Girls)

"In India, we have inherited the cultural legacy of having strong son  preference among all communities, religious groups and citizens of  varied socio-economic backgrounds. Patrilocality, patri-lineage and  patriarchal attitudes manifest in women and girls having subordinate  position in the family, discrimination in property rights and low paid er  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's 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 womb to tomb. Female infanticide and female foeticide  are widely practiced in many states. The overall sex ratio, at present, is  favourable to women in Kerala but not in most of the other states. 

The reason of female infanticide can be linked with the evil of dowry.  hypergamy etc., prevailing in our society. A more degrading and disparaging  feature of the society has been seen existing for the preceding many decades is  the immense love for male child and elimination of female fetus. With invention  of new technologies to monitor the 'Foetal' health, it was expected to be used  for taking care of the health of the unborn child, but it became a terminator of  female fetuses. Are female fetuses being deliberately eliminated or aborted, is  the question? To a great extent, yes! is the answer.  

Are the technologies (ultrasonography, amniocentesis, chorian villi biopsy,  foetoscopy, material 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 consequent  censuses. 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

2011---916 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 atleast continued, but in the past 20 years the ratio has dropped considerably.  

While there can be no moral or ethical justification for female foeticide, it  determination tests are allowed to proliferate, and the elimination female  continues to be practiced. Infact, sex determination which was mainly  fetuses allowed, the society should be ready to pay for this sin, after a few  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.

  'O haste, thee, haste,' the lady cries, 

"Though tempests round us gather; 

 I'll face the raging of the skies, 

 But not an angry 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 class rooms 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 scans conducted but also 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 1954  78000 female fetuses were aborted. During 1987-88, an estimated 13000  determination tests were conducted in seven Delhi clinics only. Today the  North-Western States where such  clinics had first appeared have the lowest  child sex ratio. Punjab has 846 girls for every 1000 boys, Haryana  census.  

The deeline in the ratio in urban areas is more than twice the one in the  rural areas. It is true that women should have the right to abort their  unwanted fetus, but if the technology is being used only to eliminate the  female fetus, then it has to be questioned.    

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 causes for elimination of female fetuses are to be traced diagonosed and  remedied. Unless the evils of forced marriages, dowry, illiteracy among the  females etc., are done away with lives of women will not improve. Banning  prenatal sex determination might add a feather in the cap of rights activists; it  will not materially improve the lives of women. A social awakening for true  respect to the girls is required and a lot of honest hard work with full political  will' in this field can only solve the problem.