Eleven government doctors in India's western state of Rajasthan have been suspended on suspicion of carrying out sex determination tests and aborting female fetuses. Despite laws banning tests used to abort unborn girls, female infanticide is common in several regions of India where families view boys as being a better asset than girls. Local authorities have been slow to implement legislation that has been in force since 1996. There has been only one conviction from 387 cases lodged under the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT). According to a senior official from Rajasthan's health ministry, in the last over 45 days, 11 government doctors have been suspended and action has been taken against 30 private doctors on charges of violating the PNDT act and practicing female feticide. The move comes after an undercover television report into abortions of unborn girls, which exposed doctors carrying out sex determination tests and convincing mothers to terminate pregnancies if the fetus was female. A joint study carried out by researchers in India and Canada recently suggested that a half-million unborn females are being aborted in India every year. States like Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh, and cities like Chandigarh have heavily skewed sex ratios. Even middle class parts of the capital, New Delhi, have far more boys than girls. In Rajasthan, there are 922 females to every 1,000 males. In March, a doctor and his assistant were jailed for two years and fined 5,000 rupees for carrying out sex determination tests in the northern state of Haryana.
Reuters Health,
June 2006
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