Abortion is a right. So should be sex determination.
In a recent judgment, the Mumbai High Court, ruled against a plea seeking quashing of the amendment to Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act which prohibits sex-determination. The petitioners argued that PCPNDT in its current form was in conflict with Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP Act) of1972. The Court in its judgment said that sex determination was against the spirit of the Indian constitution and upheld the impugned amendment.
Sex determination and abortion in India is primarily regulated by two laws. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP Act) of 1972 and the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act of 1994 subsequently amended into the PCPNDT Act in 2003 following the orders of the Supreme Court in CEHAT V Union of India–ostensibly to plug in the loopholes in the original act. The legislation regulates the use of prenatal diagnostic techniques for the determination of the sex of a fetus, and prohibits sex-determination as it would lead to selective female foeticide.
So is the PCPNDT Act in conflict with MTP Act? In one sense it is. Foeticide is defined as the act of killing the fetus–indeed, it is the first step in abortion. Hence, it is fallacious to distinguish foeticide from abortion as long as it is performed with the express approval of the mother. Unfortunately, this is the fallacy which marks the arguments of women activists who uphold the right to abortion while decrying the practice of female ”foeticide”.
(Read the rest on Policy Wise.)
Filed under: Links
@confused
“But you cannot uphold the right to abortion while denying the right to selective abortion.”
Of course you can. Just as you can uphold the right for a business (in the US at least) to fire someone for performance, but not for being of a particular race or gender. The principle is the same. Gender or racial discrimination are not allowed.
For me, abortion is a right of every woman. But in India this right hasn’t been given because of our fascination for male child.
I think that is why coercive methods are required as otherwise the situation would have been even worse. I think a certain amount of restriction is being applied by the PCPNDT Act, or else there would have been an uncontrolled racket of illegal abortions in India, i.e. feticide.
I wouldn’t have liked state intervention – if only the male would have been the culprit, but there are huge numbers of women who also clamor for a male child. So when the whole society is offender state needs to come into picture.
And yes, the law as it stands today is handicapped by its extent and its jurisdiction. But that doesn’t mean that giving it more teeth won’t be beneficial. The Ultra Sound and Abortions clinics make huge chunks of money. And they are willing to shed few of the dough to the corrupt state authorities as long as the law is kept at bay. So if there was no law it will actually be a license to commit more unlawful activities.
And I will reiterate once more what I did in my last comment- the coercion measures should go along with the ways to change the outlook of society towards women.
Coming to the solution:
As you have mentioned that there needs to be an impetus by state- for girl education, women empowerment etc. I agree that this is all required, but I feel more importantly that we as a society need to change. We need to change our outlook, our perspective, and our attitude towards women. Our culture, our traditions need to be molded according to the changing times.
Now why I said this- there are women who are financially sound, educated, but even at the end of the day they also desire for a male child instead of a girl. While in America even if the woman is a housewife, or un-educated you won’t see such a bizarre desire.
I think the answers why our society is so much allured of having a male child lies in our mores, in our customs, in our way of life.
1)After marriage women change their surname to their husband’s… which implies that if a couple have a son, he gets to perpetuate the family name of husband.
A silk-sari clad mother-in-law sitting on her million dollar sofa tells her, educated and economically empowered daughter-in-law, “bahuu, mujhe toh bas ek pota chahiya jo kandhan ka naam aage leh kie jaye”
2)Mostly after marriage parents live with their son, so again for future security everybody wants to have a son.
3)If you have a girl child, it means more responsibility. You have to slog all your life to collect money for her dowry, while if you have a son you’ll such everything from others.
4)Other reasons like I mentioned- Hindu tradition which dictates that funeral rites must be performed by a male relative, the purda system, the sati etc.
The point is as a society we have rituals and traditions which are highly against women. Even most religions don’t even have female goddess (except for Hinduism). We need to change the mind-set that women are as good as men, and that they don’t need to be confined to the walls of kitchen and home. And this can happen as you said with women empowerment, and by providing more growth opportunities for them, but these in turn will only happen when -we change the attitude that women have not been created to entertain men, we make stricter laws for crimes like molestation, harassment, and rape. In short, we provide them we an environment which is congenial and friendly. Till this happens we will never have a time when MTP and PCPNDT acts are obsolete.
The link is continuation of the above comment-
http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com/2007/09/knowing-what-to-do.html
I think women activists view point is that abortions under certain conditions is allowed, while under certain it isn’t, esp. if you want it on the pretext of having a male child. See, they are following the MTP act which as I said in no way condones feticide. While you are looking at the MTP act which in every way gives the opportunity to have an abortion by a clause (abortion under contraceptive failure) which can be misused.
And why this clause hasn’t been misused as much as it can be-
Most people are not aware of MTP act, in rural India most of the abortions that happen are illegal, as people have the notion that in government hospitals abortions can’t be done. And I reinforced my point by the abortions numbers.
My apologies for a long comment. And also congratulations to you, and to all the readers of this blog for a famous Indian victory.
Sorry one more thing-
You asked me-“In the example you give, the society would like the CM to intervene; what can she possibly do?”
I gave you the example for two reasons-
1)The report says, “Shockingly, the rich and educated parents seem to have a stronger preference for the male child. In the prosperous and educated South Delhi zone, for example, a mere 763 girls are born for every 1,000 boys.”
2)“It is strange that these people do not discriminate once the girl is born,but if given a choice they would rather have a boy. The reason being their wish to have an heir,”Dr Kumari said.
While I believe in women’s rights to make decisions regarding their bodies, I also think that the ground realities in India cannot simply be ignored. Rights and freedoms are not absolute anywhere and societies do place limits on them through laws depending on how they impact the society as a whole. US is perhaps the most liberal in granting freedoms to individuals. I have nothing against women’s right to abortion and determination of sex of the fetus, but I do think that rights need to go hand-in-hand with changes in the Indian mindset, as mentioned by Albert. I’m not quite convinced that market forces will take care of any inequities (skewed gender ratio) that would result because of freedom to determine sex and abort the fetus.
I’ve always found this dichotomy in Indian society very odd. We have present-day role models like Kiran Bedi, Vandana Shiva and many others. We have so many examples of goddesses, and our mythology has stories of their importance and their power (e.g. Parvati is more than a match for Shiv), and there are stories of men protecting women’s honor (actually that could also be part of the problem – patriarchy), but when it comes to society today, it’s generally not safe for a woman to be outdoors alone during late hours.
I think as Indian society becomes more sexually open and less repressed, men learn to cook
, attitudes towards dowry change, and women become more empowered, we won’t need restrictions on right to determine sex. Some social changes take a few generations to happen when attitudes are deeply ingrained. We just have to keep hammering at them patiently, and at a minimum make sure that we ourselves don’t perpetuate them.
Except for a few matriarchal societies or those which allowed women to find their voices, like West Bengal, South India, most clusters in the country show less or more intense image of this heinous crime. I insist on this word.
The usual suspects the states in North – Haryana, HP, Gujarat etc. where there are women “drugged under an overdose of the patriarchal culture”, there’s such a deep internalization of the male patriarchal values of the society by these women, they realize their status by producing a male heir (even in this age).
Education and emotional dependence makes a world like difference to a woman (married and unmarried).
One of the news reports on NDTV or some Hindi News channels showed two “bahus” in a family (village in Haryana), despite protests by their community, rejection by the state transport board, are driving buses in & around. Both are educated and because of this, they are respected for their families.
Women (willingly or not willingly) do visit “Backstreet Sex determining clinics”, which show high ramp thriving business. They could be run by trained doctors or untrained, unqualified folks, thanks to the country’s “not-so sense-making laws”, “junkyards filled with unimplemented laws, “Misuse of Laws by medical professionals who are politically and socially wield a power”, “Indianisation of Technology” .
One report says, “Amniocentesis and sonography scientific techniques are used in developed countries mainly to detect genetic deformities at the pre-natal stage, while in India it is used for “sex determination and elimination. The ultrasound tests are not put down on paper, but are told verbally to the clients”
It says further, “the barbaric age is gone when people crushed the heads of newborn girls under a cot, thrust husk down their throats to rip their tender gullets, gave them an overdose of opium or drowned. Now acids are used to burn the flesh….”
Sad that the woman who is participating in such heinous crime of her life, does not even attempt to realize that her self-value is plunging further. As long as such women of sych tribe are not punished or slapped with fine, some kind of fear is not created in such families or generations, trained doctors would continue misusing the technology, the mushrooming of backstreet, narrow gully sex determination clinics would continue, the existing laws would be fortified with new rules , zero action-plan, the dust would fly like a swirl of smoke n settle back down again
I see no sense in showing concen for such women (we are not in 70s, 80s, 90s…).slap them with fine or a punishment (well of course, with a promise she woould meet her husband in the jail courtyard)
A GENDER DIFFERENCE THAT IS WORTH REMEMBERING
You see an awful lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
because
Men love with their eyes, but women love with their ears.
consequently
Women woo men with dress and appearance while men woo women with words.
I recieved it in an email sent by one of my female friends.
You see an awful lot of smart guys with dumb women….Albert, that’s Erica Jong’s quote right.so true, n you need to see how men love to deny that.
and men also dumb enough not to realise the fact that smarter women know that …..
“Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.” {femme fatale in leg-cross scene}
i love ypuall ! india won! i’m so very drunk!!
@all,
Sorry, I have been too busy watching cricket to be able to reply to comments. Tomorrow!
Today we won! Yuppieeee