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India to monitor pregnancies
13/07/2007 14:57 - (SA)
New Delhi - India plans a national mandatory registry of pregnancies and abortions to stem selective abortions of girl foetuses, a minister said, according to a report on Friday.
India has only 927 females for every 1 000 males - far lower than the worldwide average of 1 050 females - mainly due to selective abortion in the country where many people prefer to have male children.
"This will check both foeticide and infant mortality," the minister for women and child development Renuka Chowdhury told the Hindustan Times daily.
Officials said the data would permit the government to focus efforts on areas with a large gap between the number of pregnancies recorded and births, the report said.
Chowdhury also told the paper abortions should only be permitted in cases with a "valid and acceptable reason", without elaborating.
There was no immediate official comment from the government on the report.
India already encourages pregnant women to voluntarily register with community health workers so they can get health and nutrition advice and benefits, one official told AFP.
"These things are not mandatory in a democracy," said a government child development official. "We have to educate people rather than forcing them."
Chowdhury's remarks came after several centres were discovered recently to be conducting outlawed sex-determination tests and aborting female foetuses.
In a gruesome discovery last month, dozens of tiny bones were found in the septic tank of a clinic belonging to a man posing as a doctor in wealthy Gurgaon, a suburb of the Indian capital.
Sons are typically seen as breadwinners. They are also needed to light their parents' funeral pyres according to Hindu rites. Girls are often viewed as a burden because of the matrimonial dowry demanded by a groom's family.
- AFP
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