NEW DELHI, July 14 (AP) — Indian women would be required to register their pregnancies and seek government permission for abortions under a proposal intended to curb abortions of female fetuses in the country, where boys are traditionally preferred. “This will help to check both feticide and infant mortality,” said Renuka Chowdhury, minister for women and child development. “With this, mysterious abortions will become difficult.”An editorial in The Times of India on Saturday derided the proposal as “ridiculous,” saying that fetal gender screening is already a criminal offense that is not strictly enforced. Boys are preferred because they do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry. “In the name of protecting the girl child, the state must not fall into the trap of disempowering women,” the editorial said. Abortions have been legal in India since 1971 and are viewed as a way to curb runaway population growth, but facilities to perform them are limited, and rural women often resort to unsafe abortions.
Gender-based abortions have been illegal since 1994. Ms. Chowdhury told The Hindustan Times that women would only be allowed to have an abortion when there is a “valid and acceptable reason,” but she did not elaborate. Last year, a study by The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported that up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted each year in India, leading to the birth of nearly 10 million fewer girls over the past two decades. Experts say that sex-selective abortions in India reduced the number of girls per 1,000 boys from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.
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