Recently, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi suggested that child sex determination during pregnancy be made mandatory and that the birth should be tracked in an effort to curb female foeticide. Jashodhara Dasgupta, convener, National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights, tells Shivam Saini whether the idea holds promise
What do you think of Maneka Gandhi's recent suggestion that prenatal sex-determination be made compulsory?
First, it is unacceptable from a legal point of view. The existing Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act makes the act of disclosure the main offence. What Gandhi is saying, therefore, is in complete contravention of the law.
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What would such a proposal, if enacted, mean for an expectant mother?
If this were to be tried out as a pilot, the disclosure of the gender of the foetus, apart from being a criminal act, might also create a lot of pressure on the woman. In some cases, if it is a girl child, the family might want to push the expectant mother to get rid of it in some underhand or even unsafe fashion. It's going to lead to a lot of families feeling uneasy and women pressured because now it would be known. Once it is known that it is a girl, it might become an enormous issue in the family that the woman is not being able to give birth to a boy. The idea, therefore, is not grounded in reality - it doesn't take into account the challenges women face in terms of the expectations to produce a male child.
These are short-term methods that encourage vigilantism and control over women's reproductive capacities. Policing pregnancies is never going to promote women's rights. It is important to go into the root causes - why society devalues daughters; why sons are preferred; how families can be made to understand that daughters are as valuable. We need to work towards such gender equality-enhancing measures rather than policing women's pregnancies. Right now, some people don't value daughters because they don't think girls have an economic contribution to make. They see girls as a liability because of factors such as dowry. So, we need to work on those attitudes if we are to create a gender-equal society.
Do you think the current system of penalising ultrasound facilities is effective?
I've been a member of the PCPNDT state appropriate authority for Uttar Pradesh. I could see the deterrent effect. There was a sense of tension among the fraternity that carries out these diagnostic tests.
The PCPNDT Act, in its own purview, is adequate. But if we look at the overall problem of sex selection, the Act is only trying to handle the diagnostic facilities; it is not trying to address the gender imbalance in society. Now, the point is if the Act is not properly implemented, that's problematic.
How do you see Gandhi's suggestion in the context of the reproductive rights of women?
The fact is that a woman may have conceived but she may not want the pregnancy at all. In a lot of cases in India, women do not even have autonomy when it comes to sex, to choose whether they want to have protected sex or if they want to conceive. The men, in those cases, don't bother to ask whether they should use contraceptives. For many women in India, the reality is that they don't even have the right to choose whether or not to become pregnant. Therefore, given that even the basic reproductive rights of women are not respected in India, to say that women are going to be policed and later criminalised because of the disclosure of their pregnancies is completely unacceptable. They may not have become pregnant out of choice, to begin with.
If, at some point, the woman chooses not to carry the pregnancy to its full term - and it is legal under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act - you cannot say that she is bound to carry the pregnancy to full term. So, the proposal made by the minister could have devastating implications for women's reproductive rights. The right to abortion is guaranteed in India under certain circumstances. As it is, abortion services are not freely available everywhere in the country; they are more readily available in cities. Therefore, some women go for unsafe abortions. Once you start policing pregnancies, women are going to have even more unsafe abortions, which would aggravate the country's already-high maternal mortality.
