Progress in science and technology and the easy availability of new machines that are able to identify the sex of the fetus, has spawned another form of violence – female feticide, killing the girl child in the womb.
Misuse of the techniques like amniocentesis and ultra sonography to determine the sex of the fetus and subsequent abortions if the fetus was found to be female was noticed by social activists in 1980s.
After intensive public debate all over India, the Parliament enacted the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act on 20th September 1994 and it was brought into operation from 1st January, 1996.
The said Act has since been amended with effect from 14th February, 2003 to make it more comprehensive and renamed as “Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994”.
The techniques of pre-conception sex selection have been brought within the ambit of the Act so as to pre-empt the use of such technologies, which significantly contribute to the declining sex ratio.
The presentation describes the salient points under the act and penalty for its misuse.
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