It is illegal to check the sex of the fetus in India; sex determination tests on pregnant women have been unlawful since 1994, this was the first line of defence against female feticide. This was done to check an alarming decline in the number of girls born for every 1,000 boys born in the country. The Preconception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 2003, commonly called PCPNDT Act, makes it illegal to determine the sex of the unborn child or even use of sex-selection technologies. According to the Act, ultrasound clinics, genetic counselling centers, and genetic laboratories cannot be used for conducting pre-natal diagnostic techniques except for detecting abnormalities such as chromosomal abnormalities, genetic metabolic diseases, sex-linked genetic diseases and congenital anomalies. The Act makes it mandatory for all ultrasound facilities to be registered and for medical practitioners to maintain records of every scan done on pregnant women. Well! Laws are not built for an uncompromising, toy world. Laws are written for the real world with practical considerations of the society. This is the primary reason why we have a Parliament. If everyone has an absolute freedom, we don’t need lawmakers to create new laws.
But yes, this is the era of the Internet, and to my surprise, I came across a product that helps a couple to detect the sex of their unborn child. You are having a Boy or a Girl — the device that is available can help you predict it. With the Gender Maker urine gender prediction test, you can find out in the privacy and comfort of your home as early as the 6th week of your pregnancy! Gender Maker will give you results in just seconds. Gender Maker urine gender prediction test will predict the sex of your baby instantly, with the utmost confidentiality, it will cost you a meagre amount. There are many such devices available online, and one of the famous websites is https://mihistore.com/products/gender-maker-boy-or-girl-prediction-test-made-in-usa. Now the question is that, why Indian government don’t ban such products and sites in India? If they can’t ban, then what is the purpose of the Law that has been framed to protect girl child?
The website claims that thousands of happy moms around the world have joined them to find out if they are having a boy or a girl. They claim that their urine gender prediction test is an easy and fun way to determine the sex of a baby. All of us want to know if we are having a boy or a girl as soon as we know we are pregnant. But there are many beasts in this society still against the birth of a girl child. Imagine how this has made easy for them, likewise even the medicine for abortion is available online with all instructions and elaborations. Imagine how dangerous this could be.
Determining the sex of a fetus should be illegal; the Indian government wants to tighten its ban on sex determination. The move follows reports that the number of girls in India in relation to the number of boys is plummeting. A growing number of abortions of female fetuses are to be blamed; despite a ban on this practice that has been in force since 1994, there are some clinics that are illegally carrying out these practices by charging higher prices but there is still some deterrence. With such easy available devices, immoral practices will continue.
A major reason for families to want sons rather than daughters is that sons bring in a dowry when they marry – even though this practice was outlawed in India half a century ago. In just 2000s, about 6 million babies have been murdered in selective sex abortions. This is humungous. The primary culprit is the ultrasound tech that was not as prevalent even three decades ago. There is a strong research backing for this. With the tech, idiots are killing their girl babies at an alarming rate. The government’s primary purpose is to protect its subjects. That means it has to act to fix the problem. If the sex determination tech is the problem, banning that is a possible solution. Of course, it is just one in a series of laws and policies that the government has to enact. Will it affect the personal comforts of a few? Maybe! But, that is superseded by the potential calamity and individual freedom on this issue matters less to me. At the end of the day, laws are created for the real world and in alignment with policies to improve the welfare of the people. This is why we elect people to the Parliament and update them on our issues. India, which is shouting the slogans of PM Modi — “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” today, fails to identify such products and take appropriate action.
Earlier the couple used to fly abroad to know whom they are giving birth. When a gynaecologist refused to reveal the sex of an unborn child during a recent ultrasonography scan of a Mumbai woman, without batting an eyelid, she told him that sex determination was as easy as flying to Dubai. She had read online about a Dubai diagnostic centre offering a genetic blood test to determine whether the fetus is a girl or boy in the seventh week of pregnancy. Tickets to Dubai are cheap at Rs 4,000 each way and the pink-and-blue test costs around $25. On the other hand, India is at the moment the preferred destination for the couples seeking infertility treatment. Foreign couples come here seeking treatment either because it is expensive in their country or because the law bans surrogacy. This is called reproductive tourism. Indian laws don’t permit sex selection because of the poor children’s sex ratio in the country where barely 913 girls are born for every 1,000 boys. But this law is applicable to Indian citizens and foreigners are free to get such checkups done. The Indian government can do little. It needs to ban certain Internet sites and is working on banning some more. We may be able to protect our Betis in the womb.
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