Saving the girl-child

A brief history of the campaign against sex selective abortion in India.


In the early-1980s, a group of women’s and health organisations in Mumbai decided to confront the medical profession’s unethical promotion of prenatal sex detection and sex selective abortion. Diagnostic centres had mushroomed even in rural areas, offering amniocentesis and other methods for a few hundred rupees, to be followed by an abortion if the foetus was of the ‘undesired’ sex. Advertisements in the local trains beckoned: “Spend a few hundred rupees today, save lakhs of rupees in dowry for the future.” Female infanticide was not only being replaced by sex selective abortion; those who may have hesitated to kill a female infant were less reluctant when it came to a medical termination of pregnancy.

There was some opposition to the campaign’s use of the expression ‘female foeticide’ to describe the extermination of the female of the species. Some felt that this equated abortion with murder. Others felt this fear was unrealistic; the western debate on abortion did not apply in the Indian context, where women had never had to fight for the right to abortion. The government had legalised abortion for its own ends -- the family planning programme.

In addition to a public campaign to discourage the use of sex selection, the Forum Against Sex Determination and Sex Pre-selection (referring to sperm separation techniques used with artificial insemination) also fought for legislation to restrict the use of prenatal diagnostic techniques to registered centres, and only when medically indicated. The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act was passed in Maharashtra in the late-1980s, and at the central level in 1994.

Some people felt the law would drive the practice underground; what was needed was social education to promote the value of the girl-child so that people would not seek such 'solutions'. The campaign responded that it was working with public education, but that a law would be of critical value as well.

In fact, the law was observed more in the breach. Doctors protected themselves by recording various indications which necessitated the diagnostic technique. And with more advanced sonography machines, even this requirement could be ignored. According to . P Phavalam, convener of the Campaign Against Sex Selective Abortion, a survey in villages in the southern state of Tamil Nadu found the sex ratio further skewed from the 1991 census.

It was only in 2000 that the Indian Medical Association got involved in the campaign and sent out letters to all its branches asking that they prevent their members from breaking the law.

In April 2001, the Medical Council of India decided to address sex selective abortion -- but felt constrained by the fact that its code of ethics did not specifically identify the practice. Thus, its response was to send a proposal to the central government, seeking an amendment in the code of ethics describing prenatal sex determination and sex selective abortion as unethical practices. Once the proposal gets formal approval, medical practitioners performing the technique can be prosecuted under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956.

By 2001, the census showed a decline in the number of girls in the 0-6-year-old age group -- from 962 girls per 1,000 boys in 1981, to 945 girls per 1,000 boys in 1991, to 927 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001. The ratio of girls to boys is worse in affluent regions of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

In 2001, health activist Sabu George, the Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) and Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM) filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court, contending that there was an alarming drop in the sex ratio due to the unchecked practice of determining foetal sex, which invariably resulted in the abortion of female foetuses.

The petition stated that legislation banning sex selection -- enacted in 1994 and in operation from 1996 -- had not been enforced. “In addition to the general disinterest on the part of various governance bodies to implement the Act, the family planning programmes’ insistence on the small family norm and the son preference bias added pressure on families to look at sex selection as a means for desired family composition.”

Among the observations made: the 2001 Census report showed an alarming fall in Punjab’s sex ratio. Not a single pre-natal diagnostic centre had been registered in the state, though it was common knowledge that these centres had mushroomed in small towns. The petition also referred to the use of pre-natal genetic diagnosis used with assisted reproductive technologies for ‘pre-conception sex selection’.

On May 4, 2001, the Supreme Court of India asked the central and state governments to sincerely implement the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, and to launch a vigorous media campaign against related unethical practices. A central supervisory board was to issue directions to all states and union territories to furnish quarterly reports on the Act's implementation.

The court asked that the central supervisory board recommend to the government possible amendments taking into account emerging medical technologies.

Contact:
Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT)
2nd Floor, B M C Maternity Home
Bamandayapada, 135 A-E, Military Road
Next to Lok Darshan,
Marol, Andheri, Mumbai 400 059
Maharashtra, India
Tel: 91-22-851 9420
Email: cehat@vsnl.com

MASUM
Flat No. 7, Krishna Apartments
Near Café Diamond
Fatima Nagar, Pune 411 013
Maharashtra, India
Tel: 91-20-672 672
Email: masumfp@pn3.vsnl.net.in

Source: http://www.infochangeindia.org/WomenIstory.jsp?recordno=227§ion_idv=1


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