Sex Determination (S.D.) test
The practice of sex determination and selective sex abortion is an example of how technology and science have been employed to further oppress women in India. S.D. is a social problem like dowry and child marriage of women, and all are crimes. The law to ban sex determination and sex selection was passed in India in 1994 to counter the misuse of various technologies. However there persist in India certain societal norms and beliefs (of economic utility of sons, socio-cultural utility in descent) which translate to a preference for sons. The 1994 PNDT (Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques) was amended in 2003 to improve the prevention of sex determination.
In a society as in India where sons are preferred for cultural and economic reasons the preference for male offspring manifests in numerous ways such as different allocation of household resources favoring males, medical care with preference given to males, neglect of female offspring, female infanticide and female fetus determination and abortion. The last-named consequence is termed S.D., sex determination. In India amniocentesis and CVB are the techniques commonly used for predicting the sex of a fetus.
The legitimate use of these techniques is for detection of genetic deformities, and they are being used all over the world for that purpose. Indiscriminate use of the S.D. test itself and abortion by unskilled persons especially, can result in injury, infection or death of the pregnant woman and or fetus. Even in skilled hands this practice is rising which actually leads to deterioration of women’s health and psychological trauma. On a larger scale S.D. represents discrimination against women from the womb and is against the constitutional principle of equality. S.D. is illegal.
Good watch; informative, eye opening, educational.
More and more women are victimized. This is about women sold into slave marriages.
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