Sex–selection abortion cases growing in India

New Delhi – A study conducted by the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI) has revealed that sex–selection abortion cases are growing in India at an alarming rate, Christian Today has confirmed.

The CMAI has brought out detailed study of births in Delhi hospitals, finding that baby boys outnumber girls by large margins, particularly in families that already have female children.

The study conducted in Delhi noted that for families where the first two children are girls, the third child is overwhelmingly male; 219 girls for every 1000 boys. For parents with one girl, the second child is also more likely to be male, about 558 girls for every 1000 boys. The badly skewed statistics made it clear that parents were persuading doctors to identify the sex of unborn children and aborting female babies.

The study was initiated by the Christian health forum after the 2001 national census recorded an alarming decline in the ratio of girls to boys among children below 6 years. The census showed fewer than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys in some areas of the country.

Laws barring sex–selection abortions, and even restrictions on tests to determine the sex of an unborn child, have evidently failed to curtail those practices. Parents retain a strong preference for male children in India.

"Preference for the male child, combined with rampant misuse of medical technology, is proving to be a menace which needs to be curbed with immediate effect," said Akhila Sivada, executive director of CMAI's policy advocacy and research group (PARG), according to the Times of India.

One commonly given reason for the significant imbalance is the existence of a dowry system, which requires a family to pay a large sum of money when the female child marries. In poor families, this could mean financial ruin and hardship. However custom also plays a role in families that are well off.

"These findings reinforce the argument that any vigorous measures for control of population growth in India will be disastrous for the SRB (sex birth ratio), which is already highly skewed against females," said Dr. Joe Varghese, coordinator for the PARG and one of the authors of the report.

Delhi has one of the greatest demographic imbalances, where the SRB is 865 girls per 1,000 boys. This is a drop of 50 since 1991 in six out of the city's nine districts.