Decades of sustained struggle for empowering women in India may have resulted in the passage of important legislations to protect their rights. And yet, the laws by themselves have, to a large extent, failed to prevent the discrimination and violence that women and girls — including those that are yet to be born — face in the country. A study has revealed that India could lose, on average, more than 1,200 female foetuses a day over the next 10 years. This, in spite of the existence of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition Of Sex Selection) Act, under which sex determination and sex-selective abortions are banned. The scale of the crisis is immense. It is projected that in the period between 2017-2025, the number of female foetuses lost through sex-determined abortions would be 4,69,000, and then grow to 5,19,000 from 2026 to 2030. This would mean that around 6.8 million girls would not even be born.

The implications are alarming. It is clear that deep-seated prejudice cannot be eradicated only by criminalizing pre-natal sex determination. More important is the indication that the problem may not entirely lie with the law itself, but with its implementation and, crucially, the conditions that make it easy for those with vested interests to work around the rules. For example, while the law makes it mandatory for all ultrasound facilities to be registered and for medical practitioners to maintain records of every scan done on pregnant women, the monitoring of such facilities is poor. Consequently, families that want sex-selective abortions — and members of the medical establishment who are willing to be complicit in a criminal act for profit — feel emboldened to make discreet arrangements: such procedures, researchers have found, are being carried out at home. While women often do not have a say in abortion-related decisions — the law recognizes this absence of choice — the same cannot be said for their kin. There is thus a concomitant crisis in morality, not just among the family but also within the medical community that is no longer willing to prioritize ethical prerogatives. As such, the bolstering of the law must be accompanied by targeted initiatives for a cultural transformation. This is especially important for traditionally laggard states such as Uttar Pradesh, which will account for the highest number of aborted female foetuses between 2017 and 2030. A number of factors — education, awareness, political will — must complement the law if millions of girls are to at least have a fighting chance at being born.