Sex Selection in India Dodges Existing Laws

All in an effort to circumvent existing laws prohibiting sex selection for purpose of eliminating the very possibility of a girl child being born.

In early July, the media stumbled on to the increasing practice among Indian parents of accessing through the Internet facilities available in the US guaranteeing a male issue even at the pre-conception stage. A process based on PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) or ICSI (Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection) technique that could make sex determination of the child possible at the conception level by taking one healthy sperm for fertilisation of the egg with freedom to chose Y over X chromosome.

New techniques have been developed in America, which combine the spectacular advances in molecular genetics and assisted reproductive technology (ART), to enable physicians to identify genetic diseases in the embryo, prior to implantation, before the pregnancy is established.

But PGD was developed for patients - especially those resorting to intrauterine insemination or in vitro fertilization - who were at risk of having children with serious genetic disorders, such as haemophilia, which often discouraged them having their own biological children. In genuine cases, PGD also offered parents to balance their family with equal number of girl and boy children.

For the Indian community in America, though, this technique came handy to perpetuate even while on alien soil their ancient prejudices. The obsession for son preference against a background of patriarchal social framework (to carry the family name forward, support in old age and for performing last rites); the girl child invariably relegated to secondary status being ultimately 'paraya dhan' leading to economic considerations arising out of the tag on daughters as a liability translating into the curse of dowry, etc. Prejudices, under bizarre conditions that conspired to promote female foeticide! They latched on to PGD as a godsend, to eventually tutor and educate their kith and kin back home in India too.

Quick on the uptake to realise its commercial potential, websites of fly-by-night operators sprung up in the US offering the facility to Indian couples across the globe - and true to form with enough gullible or eager Indians to bite the bait for dubious use at the Indian end. Websites like http://www.meditest.com, Tell Me Pink or Blue, GenSelect and http://www.babyzendormentor.com which rural Punjabis quickly transformed to 'jantarmantar', and so on - offering home pregnancy kits for a dollar price translating to around Rs.15,000 or less. Facilities to pack a blood sample to a lab in the US to know the baby's gender in a few days.

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