__NEWS__India_________________________
Missing Children: Female
Authorities in India belatedly awaken to the burgeoning practice of sex-selection abortion
By Anto Akkara
Three decades ago, India became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. The nation’s record on issues related to the protection of human life has never excited enthusiasm among pro-life activists. However , if recent pronouncements from high Indian authorities are any indication of the future, those who defend the sanctity of human life have real reasons for optimism about the country’s future.
A sudden spurt of concern for human life in India—evidenced by statements from the country’s Supreme Court and federal government officials as well as religious leaders—can be attributed to the disturbing findings of the national census, which was released in April. The preliminary reports of the decennial census, which was carried out in February, show that there are only 927 females in India for every 1,000 males. In 1991 the figure was 929 females to every 1,000 males, and that figure was taken as a cause for real concern. But the trend is apparently growing. In several parts of the country the sexual ratio is even more pronouncedly out of kilter, with fewer than 800 girls under the age of 6 for every 1,000 boys.
Obviously this discrepancy in the demographic statistics is due to the routine practice of sex-selection abortion—or, as it is known in India, female feticide. The detailed results of the 2001 census show that the practice, which was once confined to only a few states, has now become commonplace all over the country.
Because of a widespread preference for male children—sanctioned by centuries-old customs and Hindu religious beliefs, and aggravated by the prohibitive dowry demands that are still attached to a daughter’s marriage—thousands of pregnant women in India dread the birth of a baby girl. In their anxiety to avoid giving birth to “unwanted” female babies, many volunteer (and some are forced by their husbands and other family members) to undergo clandestine sex-determination tests. If the tests show that the unborn child is female, they procure an abortion.
Women’s-rights activists point out that millions of girls are now “missing” from Indian society as a result of this winnowing in the womb. And the killing of unborn baby girls, which first became statistically noticeable in the country’s major cities, is now spreading out to the smaller urban areas and even rural villages, as medical technology makes sex-selection abortions more widely available.
Authorities respond
Anguished over the steady rise in female feticide and citing the blatant abuse of modern medical techniques, the nation’s Supreme Court issued a May 4 policy statement calling upon federal and state governments to undertake vigorous media campaigns against the practice. The court directed the governments to rally public opinion against sex-selection abortion—and even against the practice of determining the sex of an unborn child—through appropriate releases to the mass media.
The Supreme Court directive also called upon the federal and state governments to embark on a serious effort to enforce a 1994 law that bans female feticide. Under the terms of the court’s policy, each state and territorial government will set up a central supervisory board which will be required to furnish quarterly reports on the implementation of that legislation. The court also instructed state governments to appoint officials at the district and local levels to enforce the law, and to establish local committees to assist in the publicity campaign.
The court’s order was a response to a public-interest suit filed by the Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT). That lawsuit, citing the findings of the new census, argued that the alarming drop in the female-to-male ratio was due to the unchecked practice of determining the sex of a fetus —a practice which is illegal in India. CEHAT pointed to the particularly remarkable sexual ratio in the northern Punjab state, where there are only 874 women for every 1,000 men. The CEHAT suit pointed out that not a single pre-natal diagnostic center has been registered in the state, although it is common knowledge that such centers were popping up in virtually every village and town.
On the same day as the court’s announcement, federal Health Minister C P Takur issued a public caution to doctors, threatening them with revocation of their medical practice licenses if they continue to perform sex-selection abortions despite the legal ban on the practice.
Almost simultaneously, the federal Department of Women and Child Development called for “immediate and serious” intervention by authorities at all levels of government to put the brakes on the practice of female feticide. Urging state governments to draw up an action plan to combat the trend, the Department admitted: “Obviously, the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PDTA) 1994, which would have prevented female feticide, is not being implemented vigorously.”
Actually, the Indian government was prompted to enact the PDTA in 1994 because the previous census in 1991 had already shown ample evidence that sex-selection abortion was becoming a major trend. At the beginning of the 20th century the Indian census had shown 971 women for every 1,000 men. When that figure had dropped to 929 in 1991, political leaders recognized that they needed to confront the problem.
The PDTA bans sex-determination tests for pregnant women, imposes fines, and even provides for prison terms for doctors who reveal the sex of a fetus to the parents. However the law, enacted with much fanfare, has been exposed as a paper tiger. More than six years after it was enacted, not a single doctor has been charged—let alone convicted—in connection with the law, despite the thousands of female feticides carried out daily across the country.
Unscrupulous doctors and parents have found ingenuous ways to work their way around the terms of the PDTA. And in fact the law is easy enough to circumvent. Doctors who run clinics with ultra sound testing equipment provide only an oral report to the parents on the sex of the unborn child. The parents can then proceed to one of the hundreds of abortion clinics that are located in every corner of the country to rid themselves of a female child. Abortion is still legal, and there is no paper trail to establish the parents’ motivations for destroying their unborn child. So law enforcement agencies have no substantial evidence with which to prosecute either the doctor or the parents for violating the ban on sex-determination tests.
Religious perspectives
It is in this context that the Akal Takht —the top governing body of the Sikh faith, based in the Punjab state—issued an edict in April declaring female feticide as contrary to Sikh maryada (religious conduct), and threatening that the offenders could face excommunication. The Sikh leaders had ample reason to be concerned about the practice. The census data showed that among children under 6 years old, the number of girls for every 1,000 boys had plummeted from 875 to 793 in the past decade in the Punjab state—where more than half of the 23 million inhabitants are Sikhs.
“The killing of daughters, whether after birth or in the womb, is against the established code of conduct,” said the five high priests of Sikhism in their April 18 statement. They cited the Sikh Reht Maryada, the code of conduct and conventions for the Sikhs. That document, in a section that deals with beliefs, observances, duties, taboos, and ceremonies, reminds the believer: “A Sikh should not kill his daughter; nor should he maintain any relationship with a killer of a daughter.” Beyond issuing that statement, the top Sikh priests planned to continue attacking the problem by calling together a meeting of religious leaders from other faiths, and forming an inter-religious campaign to curb the “unethical practice” of sex-determination. The Sikhs pointed out that this practice is banned not only by national legislation but also by the local Punjab law.
This strong response by the Sikh leadership to the latest census data represents a clear departure from the earlier silence of the Sikhs on this issue. That new development is particularly significant because the Sikhs generally form a highly conservative body, strongly influenced by the Hindu cultural heritage. And prominent among the attitudes passed down by generations of Hindus in India has been the preference for sons rather than daughters.
One root cause for the trend toward female feticide is the Hindu belief that parents cannot obtain salvation unless they have a son to perform their last rites. The prayer found in a familiar hymn in Atherva Veda, a Hindu scripture, exemplifies the religious sanction for discrimination against women: “The birth of a girl, grant elsewhere; here, grant a son.”
Because such attitudes are ingrained deep within the culture, in India women have traditionally been seen not as “the fair sex,” but as liabilities for a family; daughters cannot perform the required funeral rites, and they must be married off with a substantial dowry. The parents of daughters struggle to earn enough for a dowry, and to make payments once a marriage settlement is reached. In many cases they are unable or unwilling to make the payments they have promised. So the end result of the dowry problem can be seen in the 25,000 young brides who are burned to death every year, and the hundreds of thousands who are emotionally and physically abused by their in-laws, because their parents have not kept up with dowry demands.
In short, parents have reasons to fear the birth of a female child. And cashing in on those fears, the sex-selection abortion business thrives despite the legal ban. Sex-determination tests such as amniocentesis and blood sampling are handy methods (for those who can afford them) of avoiding the “liability” of a girl child. Even poor and illiterate people have their own methods of provoking a miscarriage in a woman who is believed (rightly or wrongly) to be carrying a female child. In some native tribes, a mysterious fruit-based drink is believed to be effective in causing an abortion. And if a female child is born, in many undeveloped areas she may be killed by stuffing her mouth with black salt, lacing her milk with pesticide or tobacco paste, or feeding her the juice of the poisonous oleander berry. She can also be strangled, buried alive, or left outside to die in the cold.
Moreover, the Indian government aggravated the situation, adding a new legal policy to intensify an old cultural problem. As early as 1971, India became the first country in the world to make abortion legal on demand, with no restrictions whatsoever on the practice, through the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. Abortion was soon an integral part of the country’s population-control policy. Any pregnant woman, married or unmarried, can now go to her private doctor for a quick abortion, while government hospitals perform the procedure at no cost, with no questions asked. Unscrupulous doctors even go to the extent of advertising their competitive rates for abortions on billboards displayed at eye-catching locations on city streets.
The Catholic response
Efforts by Catholic Church leaders to stop female infanticide in the southern Tamil Nadu state made news headlines in the early 1990s. At that time, the Salem and Madurai dioceses began a “Cradles of Mercy” campaign, in which they set up “collection boxes” at government hospitals, where parents could leave their unwanted newborn baby girls. Inspired by that Catholic initiative, the Tamil Nadu state government opened similar “cradles” in other government hospitals. However, one survey conducted in the state after the Cradles of Mercy campaign was underway found that the practice of female feticide was still widespread. As many as 3,226 unborn baby girls were killed in abortions recorded by the state in 1995.
India’s Christians boast the most balanced sex ratio among India’s religious groups, points out Virginia Saldanha, who is the executive secretary of the Women’s Desk for the Catholic Bishops Conference of India. The breakdown of the 2001 census by religious groups is not yet available, but in 1991 there were 994 female Christians for every 1,000 males. The corresponding figures were 952 women for every 1,000 male Buddhists, 946 for Jains, 930 for Muslims, 925 for Hindus, and a striking 888 for Sikhs.
Still, Saldanha complains that Christians are affected by the thinking of their neighbors, and “act like Hindus when it comes to a married daughter.” She explains that many Christians refuse to take a married daughter back into their household even if she is being mistreated by her in-laws because of a dowry dispute. And she charges that many Christians view a married daughter as paraya dhan—another’s property.
The Catholic Church on the national level made a clear statement in 1997 when the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, September 8, was proclaimed the Day of the Girl Child. That gesture was designed to “remind us how precious to the world and society are the girls born to us in the providence of God,” Church leaders explained at that time.
Today, Father Alex Vadakkumthala —the executive secretary of the Catholic bishops’ health-care commission—welcomes the sudden national awakening on the issue of female feticide. Saying that the latest public statements from national leaders is both a consolation and a vindication of the Church’s stance, Father Vadakkumthala expresses the hope that the same Indian leaders will grasp the full implications of the Catholic insistence that “life is precious, whether male or female.”
Anto Akkara writes regularly for
CWR from his home in New Delhi.