As many as 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a foetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female foetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives.
Ultrasound equipment has become cheaper, thus allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a foetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, conducted a research to show that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female foetuses will increase.
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