Kavita Srivastava - No Minister, we don't want pregnancies to be policed
Maneka Gandhi should lay off the law banning sex
determination tests
Maneka Gandhi, a senior minister in the Narendra
Modi government has shown how completely at sea she is from her remit for
women and child development by suggesting that the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal
Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act be abolished and that all pregnant
women be subjected to a sex determination test on their foetus, the
results of which would be disclosed and the expectant mothers themselves
subjected to government tracking and monitoring.
If implemented, the minister’s proposal would violate the
right to privacy of pregnant women as well as their right to have an
abortion. It would move towards criminalising the woman and absolving the
medical industry of any responsibility for the skewed sex ratio in the country. By allowing the sex of the foetus to be revealed in a
society where there is an absolute ‘desire’ for having sons and a
widespread aversion to daughters, such a policy would open the
flood gates for more sex selective abortions, strengthen the female foeticide
industry and further ensure the drop in sex ratios.
Making sex determination compulsory and subjecting all
pregnancies to monitoring would violate Article 19 of the
Constitution from where the right to privacy is derived and also from where I
get my right to hold a view on whether I want to be pregnant or not or continue
with a pregnancy or not. The Supreme Court in Nira Mathur Vs LIC India (1992)
has held that the right to keep a pregnancy private is a matter of the right to
privacy.
Similarly, it also violates the right to have a safe
abortion enshrined under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy law, where
the only legal issue for an adult, mentally sound woman is whether she has been
pregnant for less than 12 weeks. If Maneka Gandhi has her way, it is
more than likely that the pregnancy police/monitor may not allow a
woman to have an abortion, which may be legally her entitlement.
It will end up criminalising the woman as she will be targeted for seeking an
abortion, apart from making her seek unsafe abortion services.
It is important to emphasise that under the PCPNDT Act,
it is sex selective abortion that is unlawful. The crime begins with doctors
violating the law by revealing the sex of the foetus and then carrying out
a sex selective abortion. With her proposal, the minister is in a way
decriminalising a section of the corporate medical industry which has
facilitated the elimination of foetuses, shifting the burden on the woman.
Suppose Maneka Gandhi manages to ensure the installation of
an ultra sound machine at every PHC/ CHC, even in those where basic facilities
or labs are not available and the medical community agreed that every pregnancy
needed to be subjected to an ultrasound test for foetal wellbeing, which is the
cover for detecting the sex of the foetus.
Suppose too that we were to accept
the view of the minister for a moment that the sex of every child should be
disclosed to the mother. Then, we would like to ask her how the
government would monitor the approximately 2.5 crore pregnancies –
which is the average annual number of children born in the country? The same
minister has failed to show in her 21 months in office how to use better
monitoring to combat malnutrition in children, which was called a national
shame by an earlier prime minister, or promote breast feeding, which is so
essential for the nourishment of a child.
The idea of policing pregnancies will only further take away
women’s freedom and the control over their bodies, and end up absolving doctors
and hospital establishments, leading to criminalising women, and further
offsetting the sex ratio in an already imbalanced situation. It is imperative for the government to have an
informed debate on the issue before it lets a minister derail the effort
of 20 years of implementation of the PCPNDT Act.
