On Female Foeticide in India

Female foeticide is common in India. The parents-to-be get the sex of their unborn child checked by ultrasonography, and if it is a girl, they abort the pregnancy

This practice has invited outrage from the human rights organisations, the government, NGOs, intellectuals, religious organisations and others. It is a crime under law to abort a pregnancy just because the foetus is that of a female. Ultrasound clinics, which have mushroomed in the cities and towns, have been told in no uncertain terms that sex determination is illegal.

There are three questions to be asked:

What is the psycho-pathology behind this trend?
Should this trend be curbed?
How should it be curbed?

Aetiology

1. In India, family ties form the basis of society. Children depend upon their parents usually till they are 25 years old (or even more), and parents expect their children to support them in their old age.

   Social security is not provided by the government. There are no professional old age homes in India. It is almost impossible to find a hospital where a patient is treated solely by the attentions of the hospital staff. The presence of a family member is always required. Even in Intensive Care Units, a family member usually serves as an attendant, to bring medicines and surgical supplies, to keep a tab on the intravenous infusions, and so on. In short, it is impractical for a person, though he may be rich and influential, to depend on institutions for care and medical treatment.

2. In India, after marriage, the woman transfers her attentions to the her husband and his family. It is not expected of her to fulfill any role at her parental home. The man, however, does not face any such transfer of responsibility.

3. In India, most women do not get vocational training. Most of them settle for low-skill and low-paying jobs such as school teachers, maid-servants, farm hands, day-wagers and so on. These jobs are very strenuous, but they do not require extensive skills or training. There is cut-throat competition for permanent, government, or high-paying jobs; and invariably, since a woman has to deal with motherhood and bringing up of her children, she compromises with her career to the benefit of her family. From childhood itself, she is groomed for the role of a mother and of a wife, not for the role of an earning member of society.

   Earning potential of women is therefore low.

4. The custom of an expensive ceremony at the time of marriage, and of paying dowry to the groom's family, is very prevalent in India.

5. In India, divorce is uncommon. It is hard for a divorced woman to get remarried, to get social respect and to fend for herself and her children with dignity.

These factors have the following implications:

1. A woman considers her family and marriage to be of far greater significance than her career.
2. A woman is economically dependant on her husband throughout her life.
3. She is an asset for the husband's family. She fulfills the parts of a domestic servant, baby-sitter, earner, nurse for her parents-in-law, ...
4. She is a liability for her natural parents. If she is thrown out of her husband's home, they have to take her back and face the ire of society who usually gives her a bad name. Hence, they have to continue being agreeable to their son-in-law and to accept his demands for dowry etc.
5. Woman's status in society is very low. As sexual crimes are rampant in India and law enforcement and deterrence is very low, she is not safe without an escort. In her youth, she has to be protected from getting a bad name, as this would harm her marriage prospects.

It can be readily seen from the above observations that a daughter is a big burden on her natural parents and she herself is a sufferer throughout life.

On the other hand, a son is considered an investment which will pay off in the form of service and support to his old parents and which will bring a nurse, maid-servant and cook for free at their home.

Hence, to have, and to be a daughter is a curse in India.

It is therefore, not surprising, that parents prefer to have a son. The value placed on a son is so great that it is not uncommon to see parents tolerating the births of two or three daughters in the hope that the next offspring would be a son.

Hence female foeticide is considered a welcome technology by the Indian masses in their struggle against getting a daughter.

Clinical Picture

We have discussed the causes of this phenomenon. What are, now, its effects?

1. It leads to an artifically skewed sex-ratio. In most regions in North India, the ratio of females to males has fallen below 900. In some towns it is as low as 750. This leads to further tension and crime in society. Men will fight over women, society will become even more predatory and hence protective of women, women will have less and less freedom because a valuable asset will not be allowed to roam freely and form associations of her own, ...

   It is averred by many that the skewed sex ratio will automatically make women more in-demand and thus increase their social status, and thus reverse this trend. This argument has some force, but in the meanwhile, the following effects continue to be:

2. It leads to disease. Frequent abortions play havoc with the physiology and health of the mother.

3. It has harmful mental effects. Voluntary abortion is psychologically a traumatic event for both parents, more so for the mother.

4. Ultrasonographic sex-determination is an imprecise technology which can give wrong results. Consider the mental state of a family which has been happily expecting a boy and gets a girl child instead. What kind of a life that girl child is going to have? As this technology has been declared illegal, only criminally-inclined doctors and technicians now indulge in it. Hence it has become even more un-trustworthy and dangerous. Abortions performed in secret are going to be unsafe.

5. For no fault of her own, a girl child in the womb is killed before her birth.

It is thus clear that ultrasonographic sex-determination, and subsequent abortion, is a short-sighed and dangerous way to rid oneself of the burdens that society has put on oneself.

The real disease is the social pattern and government planning which has made sons into a preferred commodity and daughters into a liability.

Female foeticide is not the way to change society.

Remedy

1. Dowry is already illegal. The law is being enforced as well.
2. Social security for old people must be a great priority for the government. Hospitals must be better, and self-sufficient in providing of care to their parents. They must not depend on the presence of a family attendant. This is slowly becoming true only for the most expensive of hospitals.
3. Vocational training for women must be a great priority for the government. Women must be given an introduction to legal processes. Free legal counsel must be available to poor citizens.
4. Free, and high quality, creches and kindergartens must be established widely. This can be an additional employment opportunity for women. This is also a very low cost enterprise.
5. Any violation of the personal freedom of a mature person to engage in consensual relationships with the opposite sex must be severely punished. In India, clans, tribes, caste-people, families, police, schools, colleges, priests all seem to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral guardians of society. One frequently reads reports about police picking up young lovers from parks, clans murdering newly wed couples because the couple did not seek their permission to marry, and so on. The society must be rid of this tendency. Only then will women feel secure and free.
6. Only abortion because of a medical condition should be legal. This also means wide availability of birth control measures (exercised prior to conception), for otherwise, its enforcement will just result in increased misery for the parents and the unwanted child.