Female Feticide

Introduction
One of the greatest dangers to our contemporary human progress is the
threat of skewed sex proportion. The expanding irregularity amongst
males and females is prompting numerous violations, for example, illicit
trafficking of ladies, rapes, polygamy and dehumanization of society.
These crimes have been on an increase making this world dangerous for
women. Female feticide is a standout amongst the most violent crimes
on this planet; maybe what is wretched is that the general population
which carries out this heinous crime is amongst the affluent ones.

We all know what female feticide is. We all know why it is taking place
at such a rampant pace. But we should also know the laws which are
specifically made to prevent this heinous crime. In this article, we will
be discussing the laws which have been made by the government from
time to time to stop female feticide.

Why does female feticide take place?

These heinous killings of the girl child are advocated mainly on two
grounds. One of them is the preference culture. Many scholars believe
that female feticide takes place because of the preference of a male
child. They are preferred because they provide manual labor, are the
bread earners of the family and succeed the family lineage. The selective
abortion of a female child is most common in the areas where cultural
norm values a male child over a female child. In a family, son is always
considered as an “asset” and daughter, a “liability.”

The second reason is the financial burden. In India, it is considered that

having a daughter is a great financial burden. A huge amount of money
has to be spent on a daughter’s marriage. Sometimes people have to
mortgage their property or even have to sell it for a daughter’s marriage.
They sometimes have to take loans that are paid even by the future
generations. Due to this reason, a daughter is considered as a financial
burden which not many want to bear.

In the case of Voluntary Health Association of Punjab v. Union of

India, Hon’ble Justice Dipak Misra observed:

All involved in female feticide deliberately forget to realize that when the
fetus of a girl child is destroyed, a woman of the future is crucified. To
put it differently, the present generation invites the sufferings on its own
and also sows the seeds of suffering for the future generation, as in the
ultimate eventuate, the sex ratio gets affected and leads to manifold
social problems.

Origin
During the 1970s it was widely accepted that the root to many major
social and economic issues India was facing at the time, was due to its
growing population. However, the preference for a male child was
predominant in the Indian families and the common practice then was of
producing multiple children until a male child was born in the family.
This practice was seen as a major threat and the cause for the rapidly
increasing population. Aborting female fetuses was viewed as a viable
solution to this problem by the government hospitals. The equipment
and procedures at the time being complicated and not risk-free, there
were not many cases of female feticide. However, by the late-1980s and
the early 1990s, ultrasound techniques gained popularity throughout
India and the practice of female feticide soon spread to hospitals all over
India. However soon, this practice was opposed by some activists, and
Indian government passed the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic
Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 making sex-selective abortion illegal.
However, merely making it illegal did not stop it.

Causes

Primary causes
The primary causes of female feticide in India are patriarchal, safety
issues and lack of education

Patriarchy
Patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power in
all spheres of life, such as political leadership, moral authority, control
of property, family affairs, etc. Most of the societies in India are
patriarchal and most of the patriarchal societies are patrilineal, meaning
that the male lineage inherits the property and title. Centuries of
patriarchy in India has led to oppression of females and eventually to
female feticide since the early 1990s.

 Gender Discrimination- Centuries of patriarchy has

resulted in gender discrimination in all spheres of life. A girl has
not been considered as strong, as smart, as intelligent as a boy
since times immemorial. Girls had not been allowed to do work
 such as join the army and police, do heavy-duty jobs, catholic
priests, driving buses & trucks and professional pilots, business
management, etc. Girls have never been given the real
opportunity to make their families proud of themselves.
 A Girl cannot continue the family
lineage- According to the patriarchal structure of the society,
girls tend to leave their parental home after marriage and move
to their matrimonial home. Therefore, it is believed that girls
cannot continue the lineage of the family to which they are born.
Not only shall the family lineage come to an end, but also, the
parents shall be left on their own during their old age.
 The desire of a boy/ son- A boy/son is considered to be a
prized possession and a status symbol in the Indian society. It is
a prevalent ideology that he will increase the size of the family,
be the bread-earner for the entire family and will take care of his
parents till their last breath. The desire to procure a son is one of
the main causes of female feticide. Unnecessary and consistent
tampering of the religious ideologies has led to the
misconception that birth of a boy is a path to heaven. Facing the
brunt of such faulty ideas, girls are considered inauspicious and
worthless and are therefore killed in the womb.

Dowry system- The ill-practice of dowry has very deep roots

in the India society. A daughter has been looked at as a liability
because of the dowry system. The day a girl is born in a family,
parents start to worry about the dowry they will have to pay during
her marriage and start gathering things and money for her marriage,
from the very beginning. Excessive demands for dowry by the in-
laws and the subsequent failure on the part of girl’s parents to
fulfill such demands lead to the girl being subjected to continuous
harassment and torture. To free themselves of such burden and
distress, families resort to killing the girls inside the womb.
In the case of the State of H.P. v. Nikku Ram and others, a two-Judge
Bench of the Supreme Court has expressed its agony thus: –

“Dowry, dowry and dowry. This is the painful repetition which

confronts, and at times haunts, many parents of a girl child in this holy
land of ours where, in good old days the belief was : “Yatra Naryastu
Pujyante ramente tatra dewatan” (where woman is worshipped, there is
abode of God).”

 Alien money (Paraaya Dhan)- Girls are considered as

‘paraaya dhan’ by many parents. They believe that money spent
on the upbringing of a girl is total misspending as she will go to
her matrimonial home after her marriage. She is considered to be
the property of her future in-laws, who will consume various
resources of her parental house, but will provide no returns to
them. To prevent the wastage of resources of the family, female
feticide is considered a viable act.

Safety issues
Increase in the number of crimes against women with the invasion of
India by various intruders, became a cause of concern for families
having a girl child. Females have borne the brunt of the declining
standards of humanity, respect and demeanour. Eve teasing has become
a frequent activity throughout India. Many boys tease girls when they
find them alone or even in public places. They pass bad comments
regarding their dresses, characters, physical appearances, etc. Heinous
crimes such as sexual harassment and rape of women, have become
common in India. Protection of females is a major concern of the
society. The fear of such crimes being committed with one’s own
daughter prove detrimental for some families and therefore, they find,
killing the female fetus in the womb of the mother itself, a better option.

Lack of education
Even till date more than 25% of the Indian population continues to be
illiterate. Lack of education among Indians has proven to be detrimental
for the development on the social and psychological front.

The above graph represents the wide disparity between the male and
female literacy ratios and this disparity continues to exist even today. Ill-
practices like female feticide still prevail in India because due to lack of
education, people continue to believe in faulty ideas.

Secondary causes
Secondary causes of female feticide in India are as follows:-

 Misuse of Ultrasound technology– The Ultrasound

technology was introduced in India in the early 1990s.
Ultrasound scanning machines can be used to fetch a lot of
useful information about the early fetus growth during the
pregnancy. Unfortunately, many IVF specialists started to
misuse this technology to check the sex of the fetus and then
abort the unwanted female fetus.
 Corruption in the Medical Field- Corruption is also a
factor responsible for female feticide. The medical profession
which was once an honest and respected field of work became
corrupt with the passage of time. In an attempt to satisfy their
greed, doctors started taking a lot of money to check the gender
of the fetus using the ultrasound scan technology and then for
abortion of the unwanted female fetus.
Consequences of female feticide
As the Newton’s Third Law of Motion states, ‘for every action, there is
an equal and opposite reaction’, the after effects of this genocide are
fatal and have long term effect. It is a disaster that many have
unwittingly invited in everybody’s life. Repercussions of female feticide
are long-term and disastrous in nature. Some of them are-

1. Skewed Sex Ratio

In India, the number of girls per 1000 boys is reducing with each passing
decade. From 962 and 945 girls for every 1000 boys in the years 1981
and 1991 respectively, the sex ratio had plunged to an all-time low of
927 girls for 1000 boys in 2001.[1]

2. Female/Women Trafficking

The sharp decline in the number of girls makes them sparse for the
increasing number of eligible males for marriage. Due to this reason,
illegal trafficking of women has become prevalent in many regions.
Women, often young girls who’ve just hit puberty, are forced to marry
for a price settled by the groom to be. They are normally bought from
neighboring areas, where the number of girls might not be as minuscule
as the host region. Child marriages have become a rage and child
pregnancies, a disastrous consequence.
 3. Increase in Rape and Assault
Once women become an imperiled species, it is only a matter of time
before the cases of rape, assault and violence become common. Due to
the decline in availability of females, the surviving ones are faced with
the reality of handling a society driven by a testosterone high. The legal
system might offer protection, but many cases might not even surface
because of the fear of desolation and humiliation on the girl’s part.

4.Population Decline
With no mothers or wombs to bear a child (male or female), there would
be fewer births, leading to a rapid reduction in the country’s population.
Though a control in population is the goal of many nations like China
and India, a total wipe-out of one sex is certainly not the way to achieve
this goal.

Laws that makes female feticide illegal

Due to all these causes and implications of female feticide, many laws
have been passed from time-to-time to control this menace.

India passed its first abortion-related law in 1971, the so-called Medical
Termination of Pregnancy Act, which made abortion legit in almost all
states of the country, but it was particularly made for the cases of
medical risk to the mother and child conceived by rape. The law had
also established physicians who could legally perform the abortion in the
said scenarios. But the government had not considered the possibility of
female feticide based on technological advances. Due to this reason, this
law proved to be highly ineffective.
During the 1980’s, sex screening technologies in India was easily
accessible to the common people. Due to this reason, a large number of
reports started pouring in about the abuse of the sex screening
technologies. Considering this problem, the Government passed the Pre-
natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT) in 1994. This law was again
amended due to various reasons, and it finally became Pre-Conception
and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of
Misuse) (PCPNDT) Act in 2004. Its main goal was prevention and
punishment of prenatal sex screening and female feticide.

Implementation of the Law

Many important changes were made in the PCPNDT Act, 2004. It
brought ultrasound and amniocentesis under its ambit. It also led to the
empowerment of the Central Supervisory Board and the formation of
State Level Supervisory Board. The rules, regulations, and punishments
are made more stringent.

Despite all these changes, it has been said that the implementation of this
act has turned into a farce. It has been nearly two decades since the law
came into force and despite this, not many changes have taken place in
the society. Despite rulings given by the Supreme Court and various
High Courts to make the existing law an impediment, the courts have
shown their hesitancy in sending the offenders off to jail. The convicts in
many cases have been let off only by a mere warning by the judge which
has led to a mass negative reaction from the legal fraternity as well as
social and academic activists. Lawyers and activists have unanimously
demanded stringent punishment for the guilty while also fixing the
accountability of the competent authorities handling the cases of sex
detection[2].

Judicial pronouncement
The Judiciary has played and continues to play a vital role in the
prevention of atrocities against women, in general, and female feticide,
in particular.

In the landmark case of Centre For Enquiry Into Health And Allied
Themes (CEHAT) v. Union Of India & Others, petitioners concerned
about the implementation of the Act, moved the Union of India to Court
for effective implementation and execution of the provisions of the Pre-
Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, which had failed at achieving
its goals of preventing female feticide. The court warned the Centre,
States and Union Territories to effectively comply with the mandates of
the Act and also clarified to the appropriate authorities that it was
empowered to take criminal action against violators. The Court directed
for amendment of the Act in view of emerging technology and the Act
was amended in 2003 to Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic
Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994.The Court also
directed the formation of the National Committee (National Monitoring
and Implementation Committee— NMIC) to monitor the
implementation of The Act.

The constitutionality of The PCPNDT Act, 1994 was challenged

in Vinod Soni & Anr. v. Union of India on the ground that it
violates Article 21 of the Constitution to the extent it includes the liberty
of choosing the sex of the child. The petition was dismissed by the
Bombay High Court and the Act was held constitutional.

In the case of Voluntary Health Association of Punjab v. Union of

India, Petitioner filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court of India
to examine the ways in which the Indian state governments have
addressed the problem of sex-selective abortion in India. The Court
determined that states failed to effectively implement or enforce the Pre-
Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition on Sex-
Selection) Act, 1994. Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan issued several orders
and directions to map out unregistered clinics to ensure they did not
purchase ultra-sonography machines, seize illegally sold
ultrasonography machines, and hold workshops to inform communities
about the Act’s obligations. Justice Dipak Misra observed that, in order
to enforce these laws effectively, the awareness campaigns must
encompass social and moral impetus for the Act in order to serve the
purpose of implementing legislation effectively and to maintain
“humanism” and also that, for The Act to be successful the society must
be made aware of the equal role of women in society.

Government schemes
Both the Centre and State governments have initiated a range of girl
child welfare schemes with an object of changing the social attitude
towards the girls and for their upliftment. Following are a few such
schemes:-

1. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao- It is a central government

scheme to save the girl child from sex- selective abortions and
advance the education of girl children all over the country.
Intitially, the districts having low-sex ratio were targeted.
2. Balika Samriddhi Yojana- It is a scholarship scheme
designed to provide financial aid to young girls and their
 mothers below the poverty line. The key objective of the scheme
is to improve their status in society and improve the enrollment
as well as retention of girls in schools.
3. CBSE Udaan Scheme- It is administered by the Central
Board of Secondary Education through the Ministry of Human
Resource Development, Government of India. This scheme
focuses mainly on increasing the enrolment of girls in
engineering and other technical colleges throughout the
country.
4. Ladli Scheme of Haryana- It is a cash incentive scheme
initiated by the Haryana Government that provides a payout of
Rs. 5000 annually for a period of 5 years to families with a
second girl child born on or after 20th August 2015. The money
is deposited in a Kisan Vikas Patra. These deposits along with
interest are to be released once the concerned girl child becomes
a major.
5. Karnataka Bhagyashree Scheme- It is a Karnataka
government scheme designed to promote the birth of girl child
among families below the poverty line. Health insurance cover
up to a maximum of Rs. 25,000, is provided to the girl child,
annually.

Effectiveness
Despite rulings given by the Supreme Court and various High Courts to
make the existing law a practical reality, the implementation of this act
has turned into a farce. The legality of Medical Termination of
Pregnancy Act, 1971 allows for abortions where pregnancy carries the
risk of grave injury to women’s health, therefore, making Ultrasound
machines continued to be widely available throughout the country. In
such an environment it is very difficult to enforce a law which seeks to
control data that whizzes through informal channels and can exercise
discreetly.
The various government initiated schemes for the welfare of the girl
child focus on the people below poverty line and therefore, fail to
incentivize the prevention of sex-selective abortion in comparatively
well-off families. Most of the schemes focus on cash-incentives, but the
money given out in this regard is actually fuelling the dowry demand.
The greed being limitless, the demands are insatiable.

Suggestions
Following are some suggestions to check the evil of female foeticide:

1. There is a need to properly implement, not only the laws

prohibiting sex-selective abortion, but also, the laws combating
various causes of female foeticide, such as
o The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961
o Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012
2. However, the statutes are not an absolute solution to prevent this
practice of female foeticide. To prevent this practice public
awareness is essential and no awareness campaign can ever be
complete unless there is real focus on the genius of women and
the need for women empowerment.
3. Medical professionals can play an important role by informing
and counselling their patients regarding the gender equality and
the impact that a skewed sex ratio has on the society. Women
should be made aware about their rights and the ill-effects of
abortion.
4. More and more States should follow and come up with new
ideas such as U.P. government’s ‘Mukhbir Yojana’, launched
in 2017. Under this scheme the government provides an
incentive of up to Rs 2 lakhs to any person who would alert the
state authorities regarding the involvement of any doctor or a
medical staff in sex determination of the foetus and/or female
foeticide.
 5. Women empowerment projects, such as Project Shakti and
Project Asha Daan by HUL, Sakhi project by Hindustan Zinc,
Underprivileged Girl Child Education by DB Corp. Limited, etc
should be encouraged under the Corporate Social Responsibility
of the business firms.
6. Governments should initiate schemes focusing on the well-off
strata of the society and providing incentives other than cash.

Conclusion

Through many mediums, awareness about female foeticide is being

spread throughout the nation. Let it be plays, soap operas, mass
awareness programs, ads, endorsement by various celebrities, Beti
Bachao campaign, rallies, posters, etc. Everyone is trying to spread the
message everywhere. Despite all these efforts, the sex ratio of our
country is not improving.

According to the 2011 Census, there are approximately 110 boys behind
100 girls. This shows that we have wrecked the sex ratio of our country.
We can blame the government, the NGO’s or the society as a whole for
all we like but till the time the common man does not understand the
value of a girl child, this problem will not be solved. The people of this
country need to understand that every action has a reaction. Due to
rampant female foeticide, the demand for girls for marriage has
increased in the whole country. Due to this reason, flesh trade has
increased. In one way or the other, it is the female who suffers. We need
to understand the importance of a female. After all, they constitute one-
half of the society. They should be given the same preference and
respect which a male gets in the society.