Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi recently suggested that sex determination during pregnancy be made compulsory; that the gender of the unborn child be registered; and the birth tracked. This requires radical amendment, or repeal, of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, which forbids prenatal sex-determination. The Act needs overhaul anyhow. But this proposal has very disturbing implications in terms of the potential impacts on personal freedoms and privacy.
The PCPNDT's underlying purpose is to maintain a reasonable gender ratio. It was passed in 1994. The trigger was the development of amniocentesis, an amniotic fluid test (AFT). The AFT checks for foetal abnormalities and infections. It can also determine the sex of an unborn child. It was believed (correctly) that those who preferred male children would use sex determination tests to abort female foetuses.
India's gender ratio worsened from 972 women for every 1,000 men in the Census of 1901, to 927 in the Census of 1991. The ban of 1994 has not worked. The overall gender ratio has improved a little, to 943 in 2011 from 933 in 2001. But the child sex ratio (CSR), meaning the ratio of girls under six to boys under six has gotten worse, dropping to 919 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2011, from an already poor 927 in 2001. The CSR has deteriorated across 31 states and Union territories.
The PCPNDT is unenforceable. Technology has superseded it. It is easy to learn the gender of an unborn child cheaply, easily and with high accuracy. A little research on the Net is enough. For example, many cheap do-it-yourself gender-prediction kits are available. It is also easy for a layperson to learn how to interpret an MRI to guess the gender of an unborn child (though it is not always possible to guess gender from MRIs).
The crux of the matter is perverse incentives that create marked preferences for male children. Those incentives are known. But eradicating them is hard. Anti-dowry laws, for instance, have been in force since 1961. But 8,455 dowry deaths were reported in 2014. While the perverse incentives exist, the sex determination of unborn children and the abortion of female foetuses will continue, alongside the bride-burning.
Ms Gandhi is proposing a behavioural experiment. Tell a pregnant woman the gender of her unborn foetus. Presumably she believes that women (and by extension their families) can be shamed, or coerced, into not aborting female foetuses. Or perhaps, the abortion of female foetuses can be forbidden by amendment of the relevant laws?
But how do you do any of this without massive breaches of privacy? Secondly, this would directly interfere with the right of a woman to abort, if she doesn't want to have a baby, for whatever reasons.
The state would walk into bedrooms and record the genders of unborn children in its ledgers. The state would also interfere with, or in some way influence, a women's right to abort; it would question her choices and probably shame her, by discussing those choices in public.
India is a very illiberal nation in many ways. That is in itself the wellspring from which skewed gender-ratios arise. But Indian abortion laws are actually quite liberal. Right now, women can make choices to keep or lose a foetus as they please, with no questions being asked. It's not the state's business to enquire why a women wishes to abort.
Interfering with that right would make India measurably more illiberal. It would also give the government a free pass since the sarkar would be doing "something". In reality, the state would just avoid facing up to a smorgasbord of social evils such as dowry and gender discrimination.
Instead, the state should find ways to tackle those perverse incentives. If the ratios are to change, the regressive attitudes must be tackled and changed. And whatever is done on that front, don't abrogate one of the very few freedoms that Indian women possess: the right to abort with dignity and privacy intact.
Twitter: @devangshudatta
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