In 1990, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen unveiled a disturbing reality that would shake the conscience of the world. He discovered that approximately 100 million women were “missing” from the global population, with India accounting for a staggering share of this deficit. This wasn’t the result of war, disease, or natural disaster. These women had simply never been allowed to exist, victims of a deep-rooted preference for sons that manifested through female infanticide and, later, sex-selective abortion.
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The alarming numbers behind missing women
The 2001 Census revealed a deficit of approximately 35 million women in India, a crisis that has only deepened over time. By 2011, the number of missing women globally had risen to 126 million, with India and China accounting for 80% of this tragedy. The child sex ratio in India plummeted to 914 girls per 1,000 boys, signaling widespread gender-based discrimination before and after birth.
What makes these statistics particularly troubling is their correlation with technological advancement. The introduction of ultrasound technology in the 1980s, which should have improved maternal and child health, instead became a tool for determining fetal sex and eliminating female children. This wasn’t just happening in impoverished rural areas. Research showed that affluent, educated families were more likely to engage in sex-selective abortion than their less privileged counterparts.
When doctors became accomplices
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this crisis was how medical professionals actively promoted sex-selective abortion as a financial solution. Clinics across India brazenly advertised their services with slogans that reduced human life to a cold calculation. Advertisements proclaimed “Pay 5,000 now, save 50,000 later”, referring to the cost of a sex-determination test versus future dowry expenses. Some clinics went even further, with messages like “Better Rs. 500 now than 5 lakhs later.”
This cynical marketing strategy revealed the disturbing nexus between medical technology and patriarchal economics. Instead of challenging the dowry system that made daughters seem like financial burdens, these doctors offered to eliminate daughters altogether. The logic was twisted but effective: why address the social evil when you could simply eliminate its victims? Private clinics marketed sex-determination services as helping families achieve “quality” in their offspring, a euphemism that treated female children as defective products to be discarded.
The business of discrimination
By the late 1980s and 1990s, sex-determination had become big business. Doctors in major cities and small towns alike offered amniocentesis, ultrasound, and other diagnostic techniques specifically for sex selection. Reports indicated that over 12,000 sex-determination tests were conducted in Delhi alone in 1997. One hospital in Mumbai boasted of performing 8,000 amniocentesis tests, with only one woman wanting a daughter among all those tested.
Fighting back with powerful slogans
Against this backdrop of medical complicity and social apathy, activists launched what would become a decades-long campaign for justice. The Forum against Sex Determination and Sex Pre-selection began its crusade in Mumbai in April 1986, organizing demonstrations outside hospitals and clinics that profited from gender discrimination.
Their slogans cut through the euphemisms and exposed the violence for what it was. Placards declared “Eliminate Inequality, Not Women” and “Destroy Dowry and Dehumanisation, Not Daughters”, shifting the focus from blaming victims to challenging the systems that devalued them. Other powerful messages included “Daughters Are Not for Slaughter,” “Stop Femicide, Promote Equity,” and “Women Are Not Son-Producing Machines.”
These slogans were revolutionary because they reframed the entire debate. Instead of accepting the premise that dowry made daughters burdensome, activists demanded society invest in daughters’ education and health. They insisted that if families wanted fewer financial worries, the solution wasn’t killing girls but dismantling the dowry system and ensuring equal opportunities for all children.
Legal battles and the PNDT Act
The campaign moved from streets to courtrooms when activists realized that awareness alone wasn’t enough. Maharashtra became the first state to pass legislation in 1988, but implementation remained weak. The central government followed with the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act in 1994, yet five years later, the law existed largely on paper.
Frustrated by government inaction, Dr. Sabu George, along with organizations CEHAT and MASUM, filed a landmark Public Interest Litigation in February 2000. The Supreme Court responded in 2001 by directing both central and state governments to implement the act rigorously, create public awareness campaigns, and establish monitoring mechanisms.
Strengthening the law
The 2003 amendments expanded the law’s scope significantly, renaming it the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act. The updated act brought pre-conception sex selection techniques under regulation and established central and state supervisory boards to monitor compliance. The law made every offense cognizable, non-bailable, and non-compoundable, with penalties including up to three years imprisonment and fines up to Rs. 50,000.
However, legal victories didn’t automatically translate to ground-level change. Implementation remained inconsistent, with many districts failing to register ultrasound clinics or take action against violators. The challenge wasn’t just legal but cultural, requiring a fundamental shift in how society valued daughters.
Corporate responsibility and media power
In recent years, the fight against female foeticide has gained unexpected allies. Corporate houses have begun addressing the issue through Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, funding programs that promote girl child education, challenge discriminatory attitudes, and support women’s empowerment. Companies have launched campaigns alongside government initiatives like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, helping shift public perception.
Media coverage has also played a crucial role in empowering young women to resist dowry demands. News stories highlighting the legal consequences of sex-selection, profiling successful women professionals, and exposing the societal costs of skewed sex ratios have contributed to gradual attitude changes. Young women increasingly reject marriage proposals from families demanding dowry, asserting their right to dignity and equal treatment.
The ongoing challenge
Despite decades of activism, legal intervention, and awareness campaigns, the battle is far from won. The fundamental challenge remains changing the mindsets that view daughters as liabilities rather than assets. This requires more than laws and penalties; it demands a cultural revolution that values women’s contributions, ensures their economic independence, and eliminates practices like dowry that commodify marriage.
The campaign’s evolution from street protests to courtrooms to corporate boardrooms demonstrates the multi-faceted approach needed to address deeply entrenched discrimination. Each slogan, each legal victory, and each media campaign chips away at the edifice of patriarchy that has claimed millions of female lives. The question isn’t whether change is possible but whether society can accelerate it fast enough to save future generations of girls.
What do you think? How can we ensure that initiatives to combat sex-selective abortion don’t inadvertently restrict women’s reproductive rights? What role should men play in challenging the preference for sons that drives this crisis?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women
- https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/184037/ISAS_Working_Paper_No__195_-_The_'Missing_Women'_in_India_19092014174104.pdf
- https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/where-are-all-the-missing-girls
- https://slideshare.net/singhmamta1/save-girl-child-project-isr
- https://pha.studentorg.berkeley.edu/2021/04/10/un-natural-selection-female-feticide-in-india/
- https://www.mcgill.ca/msr/volume3/article2
- https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/UNFPA_Publication-39860.pdf
- https://gfilesindia.com/book-extract-misuse-of-reproductive-technologies-the-making-of-the-pcpndt-act/
- https://cjp.org.in/sc-upholds-constitutionality-of-section-23-of-pcpndt-act/
- https://nrhmconstructiontracker.maharashtra.gov.in/PCPNDT.pdf
- https://www.csrcares.in/breaking-barriers-the-role-of-gender-diversity-in-achieving-viksit-bharat/
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