Sex-Selective Abortion in India: The Impact on Child Mortality B ...

Using chorionic villi sampling, the sex of a fetus can be known as early as 8–10 weeks of gestation, but this method is expensive and is not widely available in India. Amniocentesis was the first method available in India in the 1970s and can detect the sex of a fetus as early as 15–17 weeks, but again is expensive and requires special equipment. Sonography or an ultrasound exam is the least invasive and least expensive method and is nearly 100% accurate by 20 weeks of gestation, but it cannot determine the sex of the fetus until the second trimester. This is the most widely used method for prenatal sex determination in India, although it is technically illegal since the 1994 passage of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act. Mobile ultrasound equipment has made sex determination testing available even in remote rural areas. Until recently, sex-selective abortion has been accepted as a means of achieving the desired family composition, based on the fundamental belief in the necessity of having sons and in a couple’s right to have them (Arnold, Kishor, & Roy, 2002).

Estimates of the number of sex-selective abortions annually in India range from a minimum of 106,000 based on survey self-reports of prenatal ultrasound and of induced abortion incidence (Arnold et al., 2002) to a conservative estimate of 500,000 based on sex ratio at birth data from a national sample of over 1 million households (Jha et al., 2006). Since prenatal sex determination testing and sex-selective abortion are illegal, they are likely to be severely underreported; thus, estimates based on self-report are likely to be considerably lower than the actual number.