'How sad, many girls missing from our country are found buried in some graveyard...
India is growing dynamically in every fields. Today, the boom in economy, innovative technologies and improved infrastructure has become nation’s pride. The country has witnessed advancements in all fields but bias against a girl child is still prevailing in the country.
What shocked me most was that in many regions of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan; the sex ratio of girls for every 1000 boys was mere 745 or 754 or at 779 respectively.
In a desire for a male child many female foetuses are aborted every year and now this has become a trend. We can simply make out the effects of this trend by knowing the fact that in many families the boys have only brothers, no sisters.
It is definitely a pathetic situation where raising a girl child is so difficult for these people as they consider her a ‘burden’ and ‘troublesome’.
Earlier when we did not have the technology to know about the sex of the foetus, the girl child used to be killed by putting a sand bag on her face or strangulating her or some poison used to be applied on the breasts of the mother. What adds more to it is that neither mothers nor their family members used to express any kind of sorrow on the deaths of their baby daughters. Probably they had no choice themselves but to submit to society’s pressures.
Now the scenario has changed. With the help of new technologies one can easily detect the sex of the foetus. So the practice of female infanticide has been replaced by female foeticide.
Many of us must be thinking that such practice is prevalent only among illiterate people who consider the boy child as "kuldeepak". But this is not true. The recent incident in which a lady died after giving birth to a male child is an eye-opener.
Ravi and his wife had two daughters, but they both wanted a boy, which led the wife to go for nine sex determination tests. After getting eight pregnancies terminated, against doctor’s advice, she conceived for the ninth time and thank god this time it was a male child. But she died just two days after giving birth to a baby boy. Now the boy is 10 and the two daughters are 23 and 21 years old.
According to a survey an increase of 28.32per cent has been witnessed in the number of working women in last two decades. But at the same time, what is more shameful is that the subsequent increase has also been registered in the number of pregnancy terminations or abortions by working women.
The reasons stated behind this practice are: They want a small family; they want better career prospects; they want a male child and they do not want daughters. Many of these women justify sex selection and abortions because they think that if they deliver a baby boy then they are looked upon in the family. Also, they do not want their daughters to suffer the hardships a girl has to face. Besides that they find themselves unable to afford the dowry expenses the parents of a girl child have to bear. “Since maintaining the high living standards has become so expensive, who will save for her?” say modern mothers.
These are the ‘serious’ reasons these literate and modern women give for not giving birth to a girl child. But they are forgetting that had their mothers thought the same way, they would have also met the same fate.
According to pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostics techniques (prohibition and sex selection) Act, which came into effect on 14th February 2003 as a replacement of the pre-natal diagnostic techniques (regulation and misuse amendment) Act 2002, that said any kind of sex selection in pre or post pregnancy is prohibited. If any person seeks the help for sex selection, he/she can face an imprisonment of three years and can be required to pay a fine of Rs 50,000. If any doctor is found guilty of this malpractice, he can face suspension of his registration by the state medical council. But these acts seem not to be casting much effect on the dark shades of human deeds.
An estimate says that the industry of ultrasound and sonography, sex-selection and female foeticide is of around 500 crore alone in India. And this is being run through small clinics, midwives, unregistered doctors and big hospitals. They conduct the abortions very secretly and many a times they become the reason for the death of many women. Or sometimes women have to suffer irreparable damages because of their unsafe methods of conducting the practice. But nobody dares to speak against this social evil, except those who know the seriousness of the situation.
So where are we heading? A land where there would be no girl. But don’t you think without woman, life would cease to exist on this earth.
Earlier when we did not have the technology to know about the sex of the foetus, the girl child used to be killed by putting a sand bag on her face or strangulating her or some poison used to be applied on the breasts of the mother. What adds more to it is that neither mothers nor their family members used to express any kind of sorrow on the deaths of their baby daughters. Probably they had no choice themselves but to submit to society’s pressures.
Now the scenario has changed. With the help of new technologies one can easily detect the sex of the foetus. So the practice of female infanticide has been replaced by female foeticide.
Many of us must be thinking that such practice is prevalent only among illiterate people who consider the boy child as "kuldeepak". But this is not true. The recent incident in which a lady died after giving birth to a male child is an eye-opener.
Ravi and his wife had two daughters, but they both wanted a boy, which led the wife to go for nine sex determination tests. After getting eight pregnancies terminated, against doctor’s advice, she conceived for the ninth time and thank god this time it was a male child. But she died just two days after giving birth to a baby boy. Now the boy is 10 and the two daughters are 23 and 21 years old.
According to a survey an increase of 28.32per cent has been witnessed in the number of working women in last two decades. But at the same time, what is more shameful is that the subsequent increase has also been registered in the number of pregnancy terminations or abortions by working women.
The reasons stated behind this practice are: They want a small family; they want better career prospects; they want a male child and they do not want daughters. Many of these women justify sex selection and abortions because they think that if they deliver a baby boy then they are looked upon in the family. Also, they do not want their daughters to suffer the hardships a girl has to face. Besides that they find themselves unable to afford the dowry expenses the parents of a girl child have to bear. “Since maintaining the high living standards has become so expensive, who will save for her?” say modern mothers.
These are the ‘serious’ reasons these literate and modern women give for not giving birth to a girl child. But they are forgetting that had their mothers thought the same way, they would have also met the same fate.
According to pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostics techniques (prohibition and sex selection) Act, which came into effect on 14th February 2003 as a replacement of the pre-natal diagnostic techniques (regulation and misuse amendment) Act 2002, that said any kind of sex selection in pre or post pregnancy is prohibited. If any person seeks the help for sex selection, he/she can face an imprisonment of three years and can be required to pay a fine of Rs 50,000. If any doctor is found guilty of this malpractice, he can face suspension of his registration by the state medical council. But these acts seem not to be casting much effect on the dark shades of human deeds.
An estimate says that the industry of ultrasound and sonography, sex-selection and female foeticide is of around 500 crore alone in India. And this is being run through small clinics, midwives, unregistered doctors and big hospitals. They conduct the abortions very secretly and many a times they become the reason for the death of many women. Or sometimes women have to suffer irreparable damages because of their unsafe methods of conducting the practice. But nobody dares to speak against this social evil, except those who know the seriousness of the situation.
So where are we heading? A land where there would be no girl. But don’t you think without woman, life would cease to exist on this earth.
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