Analyzing Female Foeticide in India

The inclination towards having male heirs has led to countless female deaths and abortions; the reason for the increase in female infanticide in India is because of the impacts of over populace, the shared framework, monetary statuses, rank frameworks, accepted practices, lady job, social convictions, religion, and so forth. A large portion of these practices is because of the worth or downgrading of ladies in certain regions of the world. The framework, custom, and convention of these male-centric social orders lead to the disregard of female babies, which is what’s going on today in India.

Sex-specific fetus removal was strange before the late twentieth century, due to the trouble of deciding the sex of the fetus before birth. Be that as it may, because of as good as ever innovation presented in India like the ultrasound, it has made the determination a simple errand.

The cycle started in the political context during the crisis in the 1970s. The assessment of the content in India, was up to discuss the impact of conjuncture between the plain manner of speaking of over populace undercover talk of femicide that Female populace is focused on for killing. During the long periods of the Emergency, Amniocentesis was presented in 1974. It was to determine birth-abandons in an example-populace, however, it was immediately appropriated by clinical business visionaries. A scourge of sex-particular premature births followed. Female child murders are abusing female mothers and ladies in general. Those ladies who go through sex assurance tests and prematurely end on realizing that the embryo is female are effectively taking a ruling against balance and the privilege to live for young ladies. 

Much of the time the ladies are not free operators but rather only casualties of a prevailing family philosophy dependent on inclination for male youngsters.10,000 female babies are murdered each year in India, and consistently it’s being acknowledged more and more by the network. Families are attempting to locate a simple way out where they don’t need to live with a long-lasting obligation.

India has one of the highest female foeticide incidents in the world. It stands exposed from the declining number of the female child population in the age group of 0-6 years from 78.83 million in 2001 to 75.84 million in 2011. During the period 1991-2011, the child sex ratio (0-6 years) declined from 945 to 914. According to a study “Children in India 2012- A Statistical Appraisal” conducted by the Central Statistics Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, nearly three million girls were “missing” in 2011 compared to 2001 due to female infanticide. According to the report, the female child population in the age group of 0-6 years was 78.83 million in 2001 which declined to 75.84 million in 2011. During the period, 1991-2011, the child sex ratio (0-6 years) declined from 945 to 914, whereas the overall sex ratio showed an improvement from 927 to 940. India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in its 2013-2014 Annual Report stated, “Some of the reasons commonly put forward to explain the consistently low levels of sex ratio are son preference, neglect of the girl child resulting in higher mortality at a younger age, female infanticide, female foeticide, higher maternal mortality and male bias in the enumeration of the population. The easy availability of sex determination tests and abortion services may also be proving to be a catalyst in the process, which may be further stimulated by pre-conception sex selection facilities.

Sex determination techniques have been in use in India since 1975 primarily for the determination of genetic abnormalities. However, these techniques were widely misused to determine the sex of the fetus and subsequent elimination if the fetus was found to be female. A study, based on a national survey of 1.1 million Indian households and published in Lancet journal on 9 January 2006, claimed that nearly 500,000 female babies were lost in India every year because of sex-selective abortion. The study claimed that 10 million female births might have been aborted in India in the past 20 years. The study discovered that the “girl deficit” was more common among educated families, especially in homes where the first-born was a girl.

India enacted the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act in 1971 to address sex-selective abortion. Both the Acts have failed to address the menace. Orthodox views regarding women need to be changed. There is a necessity of mobilizing the political will to ensure proper and better implementation of the provisions of the Act. The pernicious acts of female feticide and coercive abortions have to end before women become endangered species.