While birth of the baby boy offer refuge of their families in old time and can execute the rites for the souls of late parents and ancestors, daughters are treated as a social and economic encumber. In India fetid is a moderately new practice, rising concurrently with the advent of technological advancements in prenatal sex determination on a large scale in the sass. Detection technologies have been distorted, allowing the selective abortions of female offspring to proliferate. Legally, however, female fetid is a penal offence although female infanticide has long been committed in
India, According to the Census 2001 report the declining sex ratio which has been dropped to alarming levels, female fetid become common in the middle and higher socio-economic households, especially in north zone because of the low status of women such as dowry, looking up for son, as concern with family name are the main evil practice performing sex selection abortions in India. There is an urge to reinforce the law to stop these kinds of illegal practices, it impact overall societies especially on women.
The paper will discuss the socio-legal challenges female fetid presents, as well as the ensconce of having too few women in Indian society. Key Words: Sex Ratio, Fetid, Sex Selection Abortion, Technology Introduction “ Mahatma Gandhi” said, a woman is the companion of man, gifted with the equal mental capacities she has the right to participate in the minutest details of the activities of man, and she has the same right of freedom and liberty as he. She is entitled to a supreme place in her own sphere of activity as man is in his. Man and woman are equal in Status, but are not identical.
Female fetid is one of the extreme manifestations of violence against women a social problem that is now spreading unchecked across the country. Female footsies are selectively being aborted after pre-natal sex determination, thus denying a girl’s ‘ RIGHT TO LIFE’. They are a peerless pair being complementary to one another; each helps the other, not that without the one, the existence of the other cannot be conceived; and, therefore, it follows as a necessary result from these facts that anything that will impair the status of either of them will involve the equal ruin of both.
According to (Mann), a woman has to be reborn as a man to attain mimosa (redemption). A man Anton attain mimosa unless he has a son to light his funeral pyre. Also, it says a woman who gives birth to only daughters may be left in the eleventh year of marriage. The neglect of and discriminatory behavior against girls leading to excess female mortality has been widely documented by several studies, but the recent increase in the juvenile sex ratio discussed above has very likely resulted from rapid spread of ultrasound and amniocentesis tests for sex determination in many parts of the country, following by sex-selective abortions.
Because of simplicity of the tests and their easy availability on the there hand there is a strong son preference on female-specific abortions appear to have become popular and widely used people generally thought that the cost of the test and related abortion is much lower than the cost of providing dowry and other life-long presentations to a daughter after marriage. According to (Chuddar 2003), the alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power about the missing girls do not find an echo in the dusty by- lanes of the villages in India.
It is important to understand the emergence of this phenomenon in a wider perspective. India pioneered in legalizing induced abortion under the medical termination of pregnancy (MAT P) Act, 1971 that specifies the reasons for which an abortion can legally perform the abortions and kind of facilities in which they can be carried out. The stipulated conditions are such that abortion performed by trained doctors who are not registered in facilities not specifically approved for abortion services are termed illegal.
According to (Chafer and Nana 1993), in India illegal abortions may be 8 to 11 times as. While the intention is to provide women with safe, legal, timely abortion services, given the stringent nature of he Medical Termination of Pregnancy act, many safe abortions may be classified as not legal. Abortion can be legally availed if a pregnancy carries the risk of grave physical injury to a women, or endangers her mental health or when pregnancy result from a contraceptive failure or from rape or is likely to result in the birth of a child with physical or mental abnormalities.
Methods to detect deformities in the fetus such as amniocentesis and iconography that use ultrasound technology providing valuable and early information on a range of physical www. Journalists. Org 71 Page Female Fetid: A Social Evil in India (Challenges before Us) problems have become available in the country. However, the technologies that help detect physical or mental abnormalities in the unborn child can also identify the sex of the fetus at no extra cost or effort.
There was increasing indirect evidence from some parts of India that termination of pregnancies was resorted not for the reasons stated under the MAT P act but because there is a strong son preference leading to female- selective abortions. The gender bias was flagrantly aided by a combination of medical technology that helped detect he sex of the fetus on the one hand and the liberal abortion law that helped couples to abort female fetus on the other.
In view of this, the Indian government, responding to the petition made by non- governmental organizations and women]s groups, passes an act prohibiting the practice of pre-natal diagnosis of sex of the fetus (Pre- Natal Diagnostic Techniques [PENT] act of 1994). Under the Act, individual practitioners, clinics or centers cannot conduct tests to determine the sex of the fetus or inform the couples about it before the passing of the PENT Act in 1 994, it was evident that clinics conducting sex determination tests had shrouded in many towns in the states in the north- western belt.
The open advertisements have now disappeared but the lucrative practice seems to flourish unabated by simply going underground as evident from the continued decline in the sex ratio of children 0-6 years of age. Although the release of the 2001 Census, results has sparked serious concern about the widespread use of ultrasound and amniocentesis tests to detect the sex of the fetus, following by sex-selective abortions, our understanding of many issues around this practice, at the level of the household or form the respective of women who undergo such abortions, is extremely limited.
It is also limited about what actually compels couples or their families to resort to such a practice, who the real decision makers in the family are, what impact does aborting female fetus have on the physical or mental health of the women who typically undergoes abortion in the second trimester Of her pregnancy. When women were asked about the decision making process if the fetus was found to be that of a female child, the overwhelming response was that after one or two daughters, if the women was found to be pregnant tit another girl, the pressure on her to abort was enormous from her extended conjugal family.
Women indicated that the decision to abort a female fetus was almost entirely that of their husbands and/or mothers- in law. By themselves, women could not take the decision to go in for abortion. Women, who had virtually no decision-making power, apparently accepted whatever was desired by her conjugal family, including husbands. They simply accepted and went along with the decision made for them by others. We observed that women belonging to the higher social group sometime they homeless desire to abort a female fetus because they already have had one or two daughters.
This feeling was strong among women belonging to highly educated social groups, who valued sons much more than daughters. Although they themselves, without much hesitation, would opt for abortion, they still would have to get the permission of the elders of the family to exercise their wish. According to (Mammon Sahara 1999), activists in Punjab pointed out: “ women are conditioned by social norms and they do not have independent views, they tend to ditto what the husbands say or think and this is considered as proper behavior for ideal wives.
According to (Wert and Fletcher 1993), Liberty and value for human life are integral principles within the context of human rights. In the domain of female fetid these principles conflict. While pro-life supporters condemn as immoral the practice of female fetid, the parents assert their right to have a family of a particular sex composition. Legal support to discriminatory elimination of life is stated in the PENT Act. Yet the principal of liberty, voiced as a parental choice to desire a small and sex- defined constituent family, falls in the gambit of a criminal choice.
To attribute primacy to right to birth rather than o all-encompassing right to life is a reductionism approach. It is evident that cultural predispositions could not deny the right to birth, but could distort the natural life cycle (e. G. Female infanticide). As is evident, legislation banning the use of sex determination tests has thus far not succeeded in deterring couples from seeking these tests or preventing the medical practitioners from performing them.
Fundamental Rights, among others, ensure equality before the law and equal protection of law; prohibits discrimination against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and guarantee quality of opportunity to all citizens in matters relating to employment. Articles 14, 15, 15(3), 16, 39(a), 39(b), 39(c) and 42 of the Constitution are of specific importance in this regard.
To uphold the Constitutional mandate, the State has enacted various legislative measures intended to ensure equal rights, to counter social discrimination and various forms of violence and atrocities and to provide support services especially to working women. But above all supportive measures women’s treated as a second citizen in our society she do not even right to take decision for her own after the implosion of 66 years of independence, no choice for her carrier, marriage she always saw the face of her man (father/husband/son) for taking a small decision even if now.
The maiden episode Satiates State is regarded as an eye-opener as it highlighted how unethical medical practitioners are hand in glove with families wanting to kill the female unborn baby and how highly educated women’s are also involved in it. “ The show is extremely hard hitting. Iњ s strange that the most well educated women So carry out the worst of crimes like female fetid.
