FEMALE FOETICIDE – THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Abstract

Female foeticide is a shockingly widespread practice in India, and a particularly severe type of killing girls occurs on a regular basis, even before they are born.1 Approximately, one million women are killed every year in India due to female foeticide or the selective termination of female foeticide and this rate is still increasing. India is a vast country with different religions and culture and thus women become subject to inequality along with the denial of right to born. Can we answer that why so many families in India still want boys and not girls to be born in their families? Women in India are forced to abort female foeticides. Female feticide is stimulated by a diversity of circumstances; one of them is the responsibility to pay the dowry to the future family of her in-laws 

Girls are usually considered as a burden both socially and economically, whereas on the other had sons are considered as someone who will continue the family chain and strong to safeguard the family.

Prenatal sex detection technologies are generally exploited, by misusing these technologies for target killing of female child in the womb. This target killing of girl child is illegal and offence by the law. Female infanticide has existed in India since a long time, but the female foeticide is comparatively new and came into picture in the late 1990s with modifications in sex determining techniques in the country. In our country the practice of aborting a child is permitted, but aborting the pregnancy just because the foetus is a gild is illegal and not permitted. And if someone is found committing this crime he/she shall be punished with strict rules and laws. But these laws and rules are not enough as this trend is still in practice, in this research paper we will talk about these issues in detail. 

According to the UNFPA analysis, India lost an average of 3.6 lakh females and 5.9 lakh female children each year between 2015 and 2020 due to excess female mortality and pre-natal sex selection (missing females at birth).2 According to the research, India had the highest rate of excess female death in the world in 2012, at 13.5 per 1000. This excess accounted for roughly 11.7 percent of all female deaths under the age of five, implying that one out of every nine deaths was due to post-natal (after-birth) sex selection techniques.

According to Kamla Bhasin, a social scientist and developmental feminist activist, the situation is plainly the result of the country's patriarchal and capitalist ethos. "It should be upsetting, but it isn't; although 5 lakh COVID-19 fatalities around the world are generating such a stir, there isn't a peep from the streets to the legislatures about 460 lakh girl deaths in the country, which is deliberate." When a massive movement against sex-selection methods erupted in the 1990s, leading to the passage of a rigorous law (The PC - PNDT Act, 1994)3, there was a belief that things would change as education levels rose. If we look deep to the root of this problem, we will find that those who are highly educated and have enough wealth are also involved in such heinous crime. The reason is merely the mindset of the people that the ancestral property and family responsibilities cannot be passed on to a girl child as she will have to marry someone and leave her father’s house. These families cannot kill their girls, but lack enough bravery to stop the practice of dowry. Therefore girls are considered as responsibilities and burden.