The Hindu : `Doctors abetting female foeticide will be debarred from practice'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 27, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

`Doctors abetting female foeticide will be debarred from practice'

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI APRil 26. In a significant move against female foeticide, the Tamil Nadu Medical Council (TNMC) declared today that it would come down heavily against doctors abetting in discriminatory abortions of girls, and debar them from practice if necessary.

Speakers in a consultation meet here on the `role of doctors in halting the declining sex ratio and implementation of the Prenatal Diagnostics Tests Prevention Act', indulged in some severe doctor-bashing, holding the medical fraternity "squarely responsible" for the high incidence of female foeticide in the country.

Doctors, they said, were helping parents "kill girls before birth" through abortions after determining the sex of the unborn child using scanning devices.

Participating in the discussion, the TNMC president, M. Balasubramanian, said the medical fraternity should not dismiss the accusations lightly. On their entrance to the profession, doctors were clearly instructed in a booklet on medical ethics that female foeticide was a heinous crime.

He invited individuals and community organisations to bring to the notice of the council scan centres and doctors indulging in sex determination and eventual abortions. If convinced, the council would constitute a disciplinary committee to enquire into the complaint and issue warnings, temporary cancel the registration or even permanently debar doctors from practice, he said.

The TNMC is the registering authority for medical practitioners.

Speakers also lashed out against the uncontrolled mushrooming of scan centres in Tamil Nadu. "In villages, whether or not there are good medical centres to take care of diseases such as tuberculosis, there is at least one scan centre," the Congress leader, Jayanthi Natarajan, said.

Pointing out that scans were necessary to detect likely birth defects, she asked "When there are only 0.1 per cent birth defects in Tamil Nadu, why should it have 1,764 scan centres if not for female foeticide? This is murder."

Decline in sex ratio

Sabu M.George, an independent researcher, said most of Tamil Nadu — especially Salem, Dharmapuri, Nammakal and Theni — was not safe for girls, and that the sex ratio in nearly all the State's districts had declined in the last 10 years. "Both foeticide and infanticide are in practice in Tamil Nadu, whereas in most other States, only one of them is prevalent."

The girl child sex ratio in the State has declined from 1010 for 1000 boys in 1941 to 948 in 1991 and 939 in 2001.

The chairperson of the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women, V. Vasanthi Devi, said amendments to the PNDT Act had several positive aspects, and the Indian Medical Association and the Medical Council of India should be proactive in incorporating it as part of their rules.

The director of ACCESS, Mina Swaminathan, said doctors should not recommend scanning for pregnant women unless there was a medical necessity, and insisted that future technology for sex determination be available only in government hospitals.

The meet was organised by the Campaign Against Selective Sex Abortion.

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