Female foeticide is the illegal practice of killing a foetus which is determined as a female.

Female
foeticide is prevalent in our country as a major social evil. The patriarchal social structure of India
gives a secondary position to women.
Social belief goes that the family runs through a male and hence the birth of a male child in the
family is imminent to the carrying forward of its generation. Social discrimination and the
preference for sons have given rise to the rate of social sex determination.
Even some medical practitioners are making high incomes by determining pre-natal sex of the
child and aborting foetus on the will of the parents. The practice is unlawful and demands strict
punishment in form of fine or jail to the person requesting abortion of the unborn girl child as well
as to the practitioner who gets the sex determined.
Some kind of complications in pregnancy can also demand surgical termination of pregnancy
after eight weeks of conception. This is where the termination or abortion is legal and doctors
may have to suggest and opt for discontinuance of pregnancy for the sake of health of the
mother carrying the unborn child.
However, the technique of surgical termination is misused by some people in getting rid of the
female foetus. Some people intentionally get the sex determined of the unborn child by using the
technique of ultrasound and if it is determined as female foetus, they get removal done by
surgery. Many societies in India face the problem of skewed male-female sex ratio which is
unhealthy to any society. But the reckless practice is still on without realizing the ill effects and
drastic consequences of the practice.
Abortion of female foetus is an act of murder. God is the author of life and nobody should have
the right to take it. Some women themselves are in favour of getting their female foetus aborted
through surgery which is a shameful act and must be condemned.
Some do it willfully while others are forced by family or are fearful of the social outcomes of
bearing a girl child. But it in any case, this practice is illegal and disturbs the delicate equilibrium
of the nature. Some states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are states
where the male-female ratio is most skewed and the menace of female foeticide is to blame.
The unscrupulous murder of female foetus has no grounds for justification. More and more
people in urban as well as rural parts all over the country are getting involved in this malpractice.
With PNDT (Pre Natal Diagnostics Techniques) Act 1994 being enforces, government attempted
to regulate the use of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for legal or medical purposes and also
prevent it by setting up a central body with powers and functions to check it.
But PNDT has failed to check the malpractice as the determination of sex and services needed
for the same have proliferated accordingly. Law has no control in the wide distribution of
ultrasound machines and also nothing can be done about the information that easily transmits

through informal channels. This makes the law weak and there is no way to implement it to act
as a watchdog for the misuse of the practice.
Many women continue to be forced by family members to get the determined female foetus
aborted and doctors also continue to carry on the surgical procedure against the enforced law.
Not the whole doctor fraternity is to be blamed for such acts. There are few in the medical field
who for the sake of profit continue to reveal the sex of the unborn child and also carry our
abortions of such women. But there are some gynecologists who have begun to raise voice
against the sex selective abortions. If Gynecologists band together and ask an ultrasonographer
not to determine the sex of the foetus, the evil can still be curbed to quite an extent.
Female foeticide is a matter of shame for the couples who request for it and also for the doctors
who perform the inhumane and unlawful act of aborting an unborn girl child for the sake of easy
money. We must take it as a social and moral responsibility to stop the practice of female
foeticide and also educate and encourage others to stop it completely.
A female has a right to take birth as she will be a daughter today and a wife and a future mother
in the time to come.

Female Foeticide : A Hall of Shame - Secondary Level

Essay
Female Foeticide : A Hall of Shame
More than a hundred million women are missing because their parents wanted a son.
Female foeticide is a process of aborting perfectly healthy female foetuses after about 18 weeks (or
more) of gestation just because they are females. The same foetuses would've been allowed to live if
they were males. There is no question that female foeticide is not just unethical but it is downright
cruel as well.
Despite a law banning sex selective abortion is in force for a decade, as many as half a million female
foetuses are aborted each year in the country. Gender discrimination in our society is so entrenched,
that it begins even before a girl is born. Baby girls are throttled, poisoned or drowned in a bucket of
water.
A baby girl tied in polythene bag and dumped in a public dustbin left to be torn away by wild stray
dogs. An incident that took place nowhere else but in the very capital of our country.
To cite a couple of more examples, of many, the recovery of pieces of bones of newly born female
fetuses from a hospital backyard in Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh in February 2008. And bodies
of more than 100 fetuses found outside an abortion clinic in Pattran town in Punjab in August last year
were both deplorable.
Though India has a history of skewed female sex ratio, what the country is witnessing today is the
systematic extermination of the female child, with the ultrasound machine serving as an instrument of
murder.
Clinics offering ultrasound scanning facility have mushroomed throughout the country, and despite
making pre-natal sex determination a penal offence, doctors and parents alike rampantly violate this
law. A survey in Maharashtra showed that an alarming 95% of the amniocentesis scan were being
carried out for sex determination.
In India, the 2001 census reveals that the overall sex ratio is 933 females for every 1000 males,
showing a marginal increase of 6 points from the 1991 census of 927. However, this is a very sorry
state indeed and we are doing much worse than over a hundred years ago when the sex ratio was
972 in 1901, 946 in 1951 till the 933 today.
More and more baby girls have either been aborted or killed as infants since 1961 and that this trend
continues strong even today. Indeed, an improvement in the child sex ratio has only been marked in
one state, Kerala, and two Union Territories, Lakshwadeep and Pondicherry. Everywhere else, there is
a decrease in the number of girls.
The greatest offenders in this area are the northern and the western states, with Punjab and Haryana
leading the pack. In Punjab, the child sex ratio has decreased by 77 points to a new and horrifying low
of 798 females to a 1000 males, and Haryana has seen a decrease of 60 points, meaning there are
now only 819 females to a 1000 males. Other offenders high on this list are Himachal Pradesh, Delhi,

Chandigarh and Gujarat.

This is not so much a legal problem as it is a social disease. The son-centric model of our society
forms the foundation of the practice of female feticide and infanticide. Girls are made to face
discrimination before birth, at birth, and throughout their lives at the hands of their families. Even
those girls who are allowed to live get second-class treatment. They are denied adequate medical and
health care facilities, they are denied adequate nutrition, and they are denied educational facilities.
They are often subject to physical and sexual abuse.
This is not so much a legal problem as it is a social disease. The son-centric model of our society
forms the foundation of the practice of female feticide and infanticide. Girls are made to face
discrimination before birth, at birth, and throughout their lives at the hands of their families. Even
those girls who are allowed to live get second-class treatment. They are denied adequate medical and
health care facilities, they are denied adequate nutrition, and they are denied educational facilities.
They are often subject to physical and sexual abuse.
Unfortunately, various schemes to counter this situation brought out by many states as well as at the
central level have been ineffective in reducing the extent of this problem. Removal of this practice
must involve:
Focus on the humanist, scientific and rational approach and a move away from the traditional
teachings which support discrimination.
Empowerment of women and measures to deal with other discriminatory practices such as dowry,
etc.
A strong ethical code for doctors.
Simpler methods for complaint registration for all women, particularly those who are most vulnerable.
Publicity for the cause through the media and increasing awareness amongst the people through
NGOs and other organizations;
Regular appraisal and assessment of the indicators of the status of women such as sex ratio, female
mortality, literacy and economic participation.
Infanticide is a crime of murder and punishment should be given to both parents. There ought to be
stricter control over clinics that offer to identify the sex of a fetus and stronger check on abortions to
ensure that they are not performed for the wrong reasons. Doctors must also be sensitized and strong
punitive measures must be taken against those who violate the law.
It has been calculated that more than a hundred million women are missing because their parents
wanted a son. We have made significant scientific and technological progress and we churn out some
of the brightest minds every year in every area possible. But if we cant check female feticide all this
progress is absolutely worthless.
How can a society expect to survive without women? Indeed various studies have shown that having
far fewer women in a society leads to increased violence in a society, particularly against women. If
the macabre practice continues, it would spell doom for both sons and daughters and will have a
disastrous impact on the future generations.

Female foeticide is an issue that demands serious thinking and action in the
society. If this practice continues at the same pace, the day is near when there
will be a scarcity of females for marriage. MAN AND women are the supreme
creations of god. They have together given rise to this thriving humanity. Women
had been accorded special status in the scheme of creation for they are the
mothers.
Female foeticide is a blot on any society which calls itself cultured. Destroying
the girl child in the womb itself is a crime against humanity. This cruelty indicates
a deep bias whose reasons must be examined thoroughly to go to the root of the
problem.
Our society is patriarchal where males wield power and authority. The womens
status remain secondary here. Though their contribution to the society is no way
less, yet it had never been fully acknowledged. In our traditional society they
have been kept confined to the role of homemaker. The treatment given to the
boy and the girl child in the traditional home is visibly different. While the boy is
treated as the carrier of vanshbel and given all the privileges, the attitude
towards the girl is biased right from the childhood. The fact that they are to be
sent away one day and they do not form the part of productive force, undermine
their status. They are discriminated in food, clothing, education and medical
attention. Even if the boy is dull or of vicious habits the attitude towards him is of
acceptance rather than criticism, while in the case of girls they are slighted for
even small mistakes. All this makes their life unpleasant in their parental homes
but what really is the matter of most crucial importance is their marriage. It is
fraught with so many difficulties especially of financial nature for the parents that
their whole outlook towards the girl child changes, sometimes, taking the form of
girl foeticide.
Female foeticide is an issue that demands serious thinking and action from many
quarters of society. It is true that the mentality of equating women with money is
at its root, but the partial treatment given to the girl even by mothers and
mothers-in-laws, their demand for male child, the gender discrimination in public
sphere as well as the unethical behaviour. Sometimes, it is the mothers
themselves who opt for it as they do not want their unborn babies to suffer what
they underwent as daughters.
Earlier, the unwanted girl child was put to death right after the birth. They were
either poisoned or strangulated but the practice was not widespread as it was
difficult to hide it. But with the progress of science such techniques came into
existence that could determine the sex of the baby even at its foetal stage.
These brought a major spurt in demand for pre-natal tests as it made possible
the identification of sex and termination of pregnancy at quite an early stage.
This was commonly known as ultrasound technique and both its wide availability
and cheap cost only added to the evil. The women was made to undergo the test
and subsequently forced for abortion if the foetus was found to be a female child.
The bride under pressure from in laws could not even protest against it. In India
this technique was brought in practice around 1975 to primarily investigate the

genetic abnormality of the foetus but all the same it began to be abused for such
purposes.
Consequently, two acts were brought by the government in practice namely- The
Prenatal Diagnostic Technique Act 1994 and Medical Termination of Pregnancy
Act, to stop it. These ban pre-natal sex determination and consequent abortions.
Under the law of torts, foetus has legal rights over its paternal property. It also
has right to take legal actions against any damage made to it, through any drug
or object. Under IPC 312-318, the person involved in the killing of foetus, directly
or indirectly, if proved guilty, may be charged with life imprisonment or
imprisonment of 10 years with monetary penalty. However, even the existence of
such strict laws have not acted as deterrent to the perpetrators. This shows lack
of political will against this crime.
What the erring people completely fail to understand is the long term
consequence of this practice. It had been gravely affecting the male to female
ratio of population. At the time of independence, this ratio was 1000:946, which
kept on continuously decreasing 1000:934 in 1981, 1000:927 in 1991 and
1000:933 in 2001. This clearly indicated that there will be always shortage of
females for marriage. This may give rise to a host of evils like bride kidnapping,
or buying even apart from the social sift which their unavailability may create.
Even the concept of womb renting doesnt seem entirely possible.
Thus, it is clear that female foeticide is not merely from transgression of ethics
but grave phenomena whose social repercussion are equally alarming. Besides,
the ethical behaviour by medical fraternity and concrete legal measures equally
call for change in the mindset of society because there lies its final solution