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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Mockery of pre-natal law -Ananya Sengupta

Mockery of pre-natal law -Ananya Sengupta

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published Published on Jun 18, 2013   modified Modified on Jun 18, 2013
-The Telegraph


New Delhi: The year before was tough but last year was tougher for the unborn girl child.

According to the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of gender-related foeticides leaped from 132 in 2011 to 210 in 2012 - a jump of nearly 60 per cent, making a mockery of laws that ban pre-natal diagnostic tests. The corresponding figures for 2010 and 2009 were 81 and 63.

Under the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, parents, doctors and radiologists can be jailed for up to five years and fined Rs 50,000 for soliciting and obliging requests for such tests. Yet, the conviction rate has been low, although the number of female foeticides has been increasing over the years.

According to the latest NCRB data, the conviction rate in 2012 was a little over 5 per cent. Of the 352 cases heard in courts, only 19 resulted in convictions.

Aparajita Gogoi, director, Centre for Education, Development and Population Activities, India and the national coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance in India on Safe Motherhood says female foeticide can be curbed only through changing mindsets.

"The PCPNDT Act is just the starting point to curb female foeticide. What needs to change is the culture of just wanting sons. Parents who go for sex-determination tests are basically still caught in the mindset rooted in our culture and history. The culture of son preference was there even before ultrasound machines," she said.

The "son preference", as Gogoi puts it, has accounted for the gradual fall in India's child sex ratio in the age group of zero to six. It was 976 in 1961, 964 in 1971, 962 in 1981, 945 in 1991, 927 in 2001 and 914 in 2011.

Gogoi said there have been cases where parents have flown abroad just to know the sex of the unborn child. "In India, too, there are ways to know the sex of the child without being caught. For example, if the doctor says come back on Friday, it means the foetus is a boy, and if he says, come back on Monday, it's a girl."

In the last 10 years, the government has initiated a number of policies and changed laws to curb female foeticide, while the act itself has been amended twice. The ministry of women and child development recently wrote to the Planning Commission asking it to link disbursement of funds to performance of states in checking the plunging sex ratio.

The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council had last year recommended framing a national policy to check the declining sex ratio at birth, including tougher laws restricting sex determination.


The Telegraph, 18 June, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130618/jsp/nation/story_17019861.jsp#.UcAtytjcjco


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