Study On Abortion Of Female Fetuses In India Receives Mixed Reaction From Indian Doctors, Advocates
The
Indian Medical Association, which represents about 178,000 doctors, on Wednesday refuted a recent study that said up to 10 million female fetuses might have been aborted in the country over the past 20 years, calling the report inaccurate, while some advocates said the report indicates that sex-selective abortion practices remain widespread, the
AP/Aljazeera.net reports (AP/Aljazeera.net, 1/10). According to a study published in the Jan. 9 online edition of the journal Lancet, about 500,000 female fetuses continue to be aborted annually. Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research at Toronto-based
St. Michael's Hospital, and a team of Indian researchers examined 133,738 births among more than six million people included in a seven-year ongoing national study of female fertility and mortality. The study finds that the sex of the preceding child was a determining factor in deciding to abort a female fetus. If the first-born infant was a male, the rates of male to female fetuses for second births were approximately equivalent, the study says. In cases where the first-born infant was a female, the ratio of female to male fetuses was 759 to 1,000. When two preceding births were female, the ratio of females to males in the third-born infant was 719 to 1,000. According to government statistics, the number of girls per 1,000 boys decreased from 945 to 927 in the country between 1991 and 2001 (
Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/10).
Reaction
Narendra Saini, spokesperson for the Indian Medical Association said fetal sex determination and abortion based on the sex of the fetus have decreased since India's Supreme Court in 2001 ordered a "crackdown" of prenatal gender screening -- which has been banned in the country since 1994, according to the AP/Aljazeera.net. "This is not happening for the past four or five years after strict laws were put in place," Saini said, adding that the study's authors "are mixing the present with the past." Ranjana Kumari of the
Centre for Social Research, a women's advocacy organization, said authorities are negligent about enforcing the sex-selective abortion laws and have never convicted anyone for the practice. "There is connivance between the doctors and the parents who don't want girl children," Kumari said, adding, "The government has to come forward ... to put an end to this practice" (AP/Aljazeera.net, 1/10).
Institute of Economic Growth Professor S.C. Gulati, who conducted a previous study that found that 1.5 million feticides occurred from 1994 to 2001, estimates that nearly 290,000 gender selective abortions occur annually, based on the country's birth rate and the present gender ratio. He said, "This 10 million figure is impossible. It can be very misleading to base the figures on the average, which varies greatly each year," adding, "If there were half a million feticides a year, the sex ratio would have been very skewed indeed," he said. The government declined to comment on the report (
AFP/Yahoo News, 1/11).
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