_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________India_______________
Curbs planned for pregnancy procedure
Government responds to sex-selection process
The Indian government has announced plans for special legislation to prevent the misuse of the latest sex-determination test, known as the “chromosome separation technique” (CST).
Addressing a health seminar in New Delhi, federal health minister C. P. Thakur said that the new technique—which is aimed to ensure the birth of a male baby by checking chromosomes of sperm cells to be used in artificial conception—was being misused, with grave consequences to the country’s sex ratio. The government will soon formulate laws to curb the “deplorable practice.”
India has a heavily imbalanced sexual ratio, with 927 females for every 1,000 males. And that imbalance is growing; among children under the age of 6, there are only 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.
A national census carried out in February revealed that sex-selection abortion—a practice that had been effectively restricted only in a few states, although laws prohibiting it were on the books—has become rampant all over the country. Reacting to the census findings, the federal government threatened to revoke the medical licenses of doctors who continued to perform pre-natal diagnostic tests to determine the sex of the unborn child and to eliminate unwanted girls by abortion. The widespread preference for male children is rooted in Hindu traditions and exacerbated by the exorbitant dowry demands imposed on families when their daughters marry.
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