Chapter 13 - Prenatal Diagnostic Technique Act, 1994

Question- What is female feticide and what are the reasons for it?

Related Short Answer Questions

1. When was the abortion act implemented in India?

2. What are the reasons for female feticide?

Answer -

It is a deplorable fact that women are discriminated against even before they are born in our society. Although, the constitution has imposed restrictions on men and women not to discriminate on the basis of gender. Yet there are many babies who have to be victims of discrimination even before birth. Thousands of children are killed every year when they are still in their mother’s womb. The sex of the child is ascertained through sonography only when the child is in the mother’s womb and many people get an abortion. The killing of a female foetus is called female feticide. It is true that the Abortion Act was passed in India in 1971. It provides that such abortion should be done under medical conditions. Although there is no freedom to kill any female foetus by this act. It is very difficult to find out the sex of the foetus in big cities, but after a long time, many such clinics have opened in different parts of the country which detect the gender. According to television reports, many villages do not have drinking water, but facilities are available to know the sex of the foetus and to perform abortions. Often the conditions in these clinics are not hygienic. Despite all this, parents and families are ready to get rid of unborn girls.

What is the reason that parents kill unborn girls? They justify this action by saying that the birth of a girl brings a great burden on them in future. This is because they have to pay a huge amount of dowry. In India’s patriarchal family, the cost of a girl’s marriage is usually paid by the parents. This cost is also paid by gift.

The interesting thing is that dowry is not paid or demanded only once. The dowry system is considered to be a major reason for the killing of women in poor and prosperous homes. Many women argue that they do not want their girls to bear the hardships that they took for their own dowry. Isn’t it surprising , that she herself does the same kind of feticide with her own hands? How many women will be there who are not ready to kill the foetus? In fact, the economic pressures are so high that they have to do all this because of no arrangement for

their husband or family or security. In the absence of these, women are ready to abort the fetus. The Pre - Neonatal - Formulation - Techniques Act was passed in 1994. Even today, this Act has not been implemented effectively. The situation is so far that neither any doctor nor any parent has been punished till date for disobeying it. The missionaries implementing this law are aware of the hospitals in which such work is done. Still no legal action is taken against them. The result of this is that even today these activities are going on without any restriction. People openly commit feticide and say: “From spending Rs 5,00,000/- later, spend Rs 1500 for now.” Today in most parts of the country, there are clinics for gender diagnosing which openly do this business and they do not consider it a serious challenge.

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