Sex-selective abortion
Also called: Female foeticide · Topic: Gender, Religion and Caste in Politics · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 3 "Gender, Religion and Caste"
Meaning
Sex-selective abortion means ending a pregnancy because the foetus (unborn baby) is a girl. It is also called female foeticide. Son preference drives it: many families value sons more than daughters. It lowers the child sex ratio, which is the number of girls per 1,000 boys aged 0-6. Economist Amartya Sen (1990) called the girls lost in this way "missing women". The PCPNDT Act 1994 bans finding out the sex of a foetus.
Example
India's child sex ratio fell from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001 and 918 in 2011. In 2011 it was only 834 in Haryana and 846 in Punjab.
Don't confuse with
- Overall sex ratio: this counts females per 1,000 males in the whole population, and NFHS-5 put it at 1,020. The child sex ratio counts only children aged 0-6. It shows the effect of sex-selective abortion much more clearly.