This practice was seen as a major threat and the cause for the rapidly increasing

population. Aborting female foetuses was viewed as a viable solution to this problem by
the government hospitals. The equipment and procedures at the time being complicated
and not risk-free, there were not many cases of female foeticide

Feticide is killing of fetus in mothers womb. If the specific situation is inevitable the law allows
abortion of fetus but sex selective abortion is not supportable. In southern parts of our country this
practise continues where they cannot afford illegal ultrasound. There is a pressure on female to
produce sons. India has one of the highest female feticide incidents in the world. Apart from Pre-
natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 (PNDT Act) to address
the issue of sex-selective abortion, India also enacted the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP)
Act in 1971 to regulate access to safe abortions. The MTP Act of 1971, amended in 2002, allows
abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in cases where “the continuance of the pregnancy would
involve a risk to the life of the pregnant woman or of grave injury to her physical or mental health.

These heinous killings of the girl child are advocated mainly on two grounds. One of
them is the preference culture. Many scholars believe that female foeticide takes place
because of the preference of a male child. They are preferred because they provide
manual labor, are the bread earners of the family and succeed the family lineage. The
selective abortion of a female child is most common in the areas where cultural norm
values a male child over a female child. In a family, son is always considered as an
“asset” and daughter, a “liability.”

Causes of female foeticide in India are :

 Patriarchy :Patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power in all spheres of
life, such as political leadership, moral authority, control of property, family affairs, etc. Most of the
societies in India are patriarchal and most of the patriarchal societies are patrilineal, meaning that the
male lineage inherits the property and title.
 A Girl cannot continue the family lineage According to the patriarchal structure of the society, girls
tend to leave their parental home after marriage and move to their matrimonial home. Therefore, it is
believed that girls cannot continue the lineage of the family to which they are born. Not only shall the
family lineage come to an end, but also, the parents shall be left on their own during their old age.
 The desire of a boy/ son- A boy/son is considered to be a prized possession and a status symbol in the
Indian society. It is a prevalent ideology that he will increase the size of the family, be the bread-earner
for the entire family and will take care of his parents till their last breath. The desire to procure a son is
one of the main causes of female foeticide.
 Dowry system- The ill-practice of dowry has very deep roots in the India society. A daughter has been
looked at as a liability because of the dowry system. The day a girl is born in a family, parents start to
worry about the dowry they will have to pay during her marriage and start gathering things and money
for her marriage, from the very beginning.

In the case of the State of H.P. v. Nikku Ram and others, a two-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court  has
expressed its agony thus: –

“Dowry, dowry and dowry. This is the painful repetition which confronts, and at times haunts, many parents of
a girl child in this holy land of ours where, in good old days the belief was :  “Yatra Naryastu Pujyante ramente
tatra dewatan” (where woman is worshipped, there is abode of God).
Laws that makes female foeticide illegal :

India passed its first abortion-related law in 1971, the so-called Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, which
made abortion legit in almost all states of the country, but it was particularly made for the cases of medical risk
to the mother and child conceived by rape. The law had also established physicians who could legally perform
the abortion in the said scenarios. But the government had not considered the possibility of female foeticide
based on technological advances. Due to this reason, this law proved to be highly ineffective.

During the 1980’s, sex screening technologies in India was easily accessible to the common people. Due to this
reason, a large number of reports started pouring in about the abuse of the sex screening technologies.
Considering this problem, the Government passed the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT) in 1994.
This law was again amended due to various reasons, and it finally became Pre-Conception and Pre-natal
Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) (PCPNDT) Act in 2004. Its main goal was
prevention and punishment of prenatal sex screening and female foeticide.

Implementation of the Law

Many important changes were made in the PCPNDT Act, 2004. It brought ultrasound and amniocentesis under
its ambit. It also led to the empowerment of the Central Supervisory Board and the formation of State Level
Supervisory Board. The rules, regulations, and punishments are made more stringent.

It has been nearly two decades since the law came into force and despite this, not many changes have taken
place in the society. Despite rulings given by the Supreme Court and various High Courts to make the existing
law an impediment, the courts have shown their hesitancy in sending the offenders off to jail. The convicts in
many cases have been let off only by a mere warning by the judge which has led to a mass negative reaction
from the legal fraternity as well as social and academic activists. Lawyers and activists have unanimously
demanded stringent punishment for the guilty while also fixing the accountability of the competent authorities
handling the cases of sex detection

EFFECTIVENESS

Despite rulings given by the Supreme Court and various High Courts to make the existing law a practical reality,
the implementation of this act has turned into a farce. The legality of Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act,
1971 allows for abortions where pregnancy carries the risk of grave injury to women’s health, therefore, making
Ultrasound machines continued to be widely available throughout the country. In such an environment it is very
difficult to enforce a law which seeks to control data that whizzes through informal channels and can exercise
discreetly.

The various government initiated schemes for the welfare of the girl child focus on the people below poverty
line and therefore, fail to incentivize the prevention of sex-selective abortion in comparatively well-off families.
Most of the schemes focus on cash-incentives, but the money given out in this regard is actually fuelling the
dowry demand. The greed being limitless, the demands are insatiable.
Government schemes :

1. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao- It is a central government scheme to save the girl child from sex- selective
abortions and advance the education of girl children all over the country. Intitially, the districts having
low-sex ratio were targeted.
2. Balika Samriddhi Yojana- It is a scholarship scheme designed to provide financial aid to young girls
and their mothers below the poverty line. The key objective of the scheme is to improve their status in
society and improve the enrollment as well as retention of girls in schools.
3. CBSE Udaan Scheme- It is administered by the Central Board of Secondary Education through the
Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. This scheme focuses mainly on
increasing the enrolment of girls in engineering and other technical colleges throughout the country.