Sex Selection/Determination in India: Contemporary Developments

Abstract

This short note will deal briefly with contemporary developments relating to the decline of child sex ratios due to abuse of medical technologies. The historic contribution of the Maharashtra campaign which first called public attention to this problem led by the Forum against Sex Determination in the mid-1980s has been highlighted by RP Ravindra Vibhuti Patel Flavia Agnes Amar Jesani and others. This note will largely focus on the 2001 Census results and developments in the ongoing litigation in the Supreme Court of India to enforce implementation of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act 1994. The 2001 Census highlighted the drastic decline in child sex ratios in several states in North and West India and continued declines in major Southern states. It was in the North-Western and Western states that private fetal sex determination clinics were first established and where the practice of selective abortion of female fetuses became popular in the late 1970s and early 80s. The Southern states e.g. Karnataka Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have shown declines in child sex ratios but these are less than in the Northern states as sex determination clinics emerged in the South only a decade after they became popular in the North. (excerpt)