Online drive against female foeticide
12 March 2009
Fight-Back, an online gender justice campaign, is mobilising Indian medicos on their web-based platform to spread awareness on the shocking practice of female foeticide.
New Delhi: An online youth movement campaigning for
gender justice and building public opinion against female foeticide has
launched a new initiative to spread awareness among the medical
fraternity against the social malaise. Fight-Back,
which was set up in 2008, has declared March 8 as the International
Missing Women's Day to highlight the missing number of girl-children
who fall victims to foeticide while they are in the womb.
Estimates say that nearly two million girl-children are victims of foeticide in rural and urban India every year.
Fight-Back
has brought 130 doctors on one platform to "condemn female foeticide"
and to "issue a pledge" on March 8 that they will not abet illegal sex
determination tests and aborting of female foetuses. The pledge was
posted on the site of the organisation on March 8. "Female foeticide is one of India's most shameful secrets and is
supported by a nexus of doctors and affluent people. No one gets
convicted, no one is jailed and the efforts to curb it are mostly
cosmetic. It is rampant in progressive states like Punjab, Haryana and
in several heartland states," Fight-Back founder Zubin Driver, creative
head of Network 18 group, said from Mumbai. "We are asking the Indian Medical Association to ban doctors who are
found abetting female foeticide. We may even make a small TVC
(television capsule) for positive action. We are planning a
multi-pronged approach and doctors play a central role in curbing the
practice because the first thing a couple does is to go the general
physician for consultation in times of pregnancies," Driver said. According to Driver, the laws monitoring female foeticide and
illegal sex determination tests were useless because people in India
have a disregard for such laws. Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 and the
Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique Act, 1994, abortions may be carried out
only if there is threat to the life of the mother, if a child could be
born handicapped or if a child has been conceived as a result of rape. The organisation has also been campaigning for introduction of
fundamental duties of the constitution as a school module across India
post the Mumbai attacks to build consensus against terrorism and foster
a sense of patriotic spirit.
The article was originally published in IANS.
