Sex Selection in the United States and India: A Contextualist Feminist Approach (original) (raw)

Sex-Selection in India and the United States: A Contextualist Feminist Approach

Seven states in the United States have passed sex selection abortion bans, bills are pending in several other states, and a bill has been reintroduced in the U.S. Congress. In analyzing state legislative hearings, this article documents how the wide-spread practice of sex selection in other countries, particularly India and China, is being used by anti-abortion groups as a way to restrict…

Sex Selection and Abortion in India: Some Implications for Indian Women by Ambika Kohli

The purpose of the research is to demonstrate how the practice of abortion in India involves state intervention in women’s personal lives. I demonstrate how significant contradictions arise in state practice towards women’s access to abortion. I discuss the implications of these contradictions for women. Moreover the sensitive issue of female feticide, which is the product of gender inequality, has been highlighted to show how this practice is culturally embedded and are generated indirectly by some of the state policies. This research shows how abortions in India are often a breach of reproductive rights of women, and merely serve as a tool to address the concern about population explosion. Moreover the state has imposed the 1994 Pre Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act to prohibit sex selective abortions from above, without bringing changes from below, which is making the law stringent implications ineffective.

Feminist Discourse on Sex Screening and Selective Abortion of Female Foetuses

Bioethics, 2004

Although a preference for sons is reportedly a universal phenomenon, in some Asian societies daughters are considered financial and cultural liabilities. Increasing availability of ultrasonography and amniocentesis has led to widespread gender screening and selective abortion of normal female foetuses in many countries, including India. Feminists have taken widely divergent positions on the morality of this practice. Feminists from India have strongly opposed it, considering it as a further disenfranchisement of females in their patriarchal society, and have agitated successfully for legislative prohibitions. Libertarian feminists on the other hand, primarily from the United States, have argued that any prohibition of the use of this technology is a curtailment of a woman's reproductive choices and a violation of her right to make autonomous decisions regarding procreation. Using India as an illustrative case, this paper argues that in the context of what prevails in some societies, an ethical argument that hinges on the principle of autonomy as understood in the West can be problematic. Furthermore, a liberal theoretical assumption that it is always better to have more rather than fewer choices may not hold up well against the realities of life for such women. Although feminists have little disagreement concerning substantive matters, it is in the area of strategy that differences of opinion have arisen, their moral reasoning and responses shaped by the culture, ethnicity, class and race to which they belong. A view that a single 'orthodox' feminism of any variety can embody the aspiration of all women reverts to the problematic issues in the evolution of the rationalistic, individualistic, 'male' ethics against which women have consistently raised objections.

Sex-selective Abortion in India: Exploring Institutional Dynamics and Responses

In India, sex-selective abortion is an established phenomenon that cuts across rural/urban, educational and socioeconomic status divides. However, in understanding this complex and deeply contextualized issue, kinship patterns, dowry and the low social value accorded to women are often mobilized to serve as overarching explanations. While these factors are important in explaining sex-selection, in an effort to expand beyond the generalizing discourse that exercises a single point focus on patriarchal cultural practices, this paper centralizes the role of institutional structures. Specifically, the paper explores state population control policies and the unchecked utilization of reproductive technologies to uncover the contemporary institutional factors that lend sex-selective abortion a normative appeal. Moreover, legal approaches to eradicating sex-selective abortion are examined in tandem with feminist conceptualizations of the issue to uncover the efficacy and dynamics of institutional responses to sex-selection in India. The paper asserts the importance of an integrative approach for understanding and responding to sex-selection, both at the macro and micro level.

How did the female fetus speak? Abortion, sex selection, and national futures in India

Feminist Anthropology, 2023

The debate around abortion is often constituted in terms of a tension between fetal personhood on the one hand and the right to bodily autonomy on the other. The supposed personhood of the fetus is widely invoked to restrict the right to abortion. In India however, one sees a paradoxical situation. Not only is there wide legal access to abortion, but this also exists simultaneously with an active legal imperative to protect the female fetus. How did the Indian state allow access to abortion while protecting a unique fetus? This paper argues that the question of reproduction and abortion in India is intimately tied to imaginations of national futures and risks and reproductive bodies have been entangled in those futures. The discourse around the legalization of abortion and the criminalization of sex-selection offered differing but stark visions of national endangerment which played a critical role in authorizing different state actions targeting reproductive bodies while sustaining this paradox. This paper expands the anthropological understanding of the different grounds of abortion debates globally.

Sex selection and reproductive freedom

Women's Studies International Forum, 1992

Synopsis-The emergence of new technologies for determining the sex of children again brings to the forefront the disquieting preference for male offspring evidenced in most societies. After a brief discussion of the cultural underpinnings of this predilection, I examine three societies where the use of selective abortion is well documented: India, South Korea, and China. The relevance of these data for abortion policy in the United States is discussed. Following this is an evaluation of some of the biological, social, and psychological arguments for and against the use of sex selection. The paper then turns to the central question: whether or not the state ought to regulate sex selection, including both pre-and post-conception techniques. After reviewing the arguments in favor of regulation , the essay concludes that regulation would jeopardize the very rights it was designed to

Sex selection in India: Why a ban is not justified

Developing World Bioethics, 2019

When widespread use of sex‐selective abortion and sex selection through assisted reproduction lead to severe harms to third parties and perpetuate discrimination, should these practices be banned? In this paper I focus on India and show why a common argument for a ban on sex selection fails even in these circumstances. I set aside a common objection to the argument, namely that women have a right to procreative autonomy that trumps the state's interest in protecting other parties from harm, and argue against the ban on consequentialist grounds. I perform a pairwise comparative analysis of sex selection and its plausible alternatives and argue that that the ban fails to improve the state of affairs relative to a scenario without a ban. The ban makes the situation worse, especially for mothers and their daughters. India should therefore repeal its ban on sex selection.

The bio-politics of population control and sex-selective abortion in China and India

China and India, two countries with skewed sex ratios in favor of males, have introduced a wide range of policies over the past few decades to prevent couples from deselecting daughters, including criminalizing sex-selective abortion through legal jurisdiction. This article aims to analyze how such policies are situated within the bio-politics of population control and how some of the outcomes reflect each government's inadequacy in addressing the social dynamics around abortion decision making and the social, physical, and psychological effects on women's wellbeing in the face of criminalization of sex-selective abortion. The analysis finds that overall, the criminalization of sex selection has not been successful in these two countries. Further, the broader economic, social, and cultural dynamics which produce bias against females must be a part of the strategy to combat sex selection, rather than a narrow criminalization of abortion which endangers women's access to safe reproductive health services and their social, physical, and psychological wellbeing.

Sex-Selective abortions: A Heinous form of Gendercide

2019

Preference for son and prenatal sex-selective abortion is gender-based violence. Sex selective foeticide is basically a consequence of sexist attitudes and institutions of Indian society. There is preference for male child by parents especially in north western states of Haryana and Punjab in India. These states that have experienced quite rapid economic development in recent decades show lowest sex ratio in India. Sons are considered to be security for old age. They are preferred because they are considered to have a higher wage-earning capacity (especially in agrarian economies) and they continue the family line. On the other hand, discrimination against girls in India is related to dowry and patriarchal family systems. For centuries, son preference has led to postnatal discrimination against girls. This discrimination against women has become so embedded in Indian society that some families would rather not have daughters at all. Persistent son preference and the spread of prenat...

SEX SELECTIVE ABORTIONS:INFLECTIONS OF PATRIARCHY AND MODERNITY

In India the societies are mostly patriarchal. In these patriarchal societies, sons are favored rather than daughters. This may express itself in different ways. First, parents may prefer the birth of male rather than a female child. In extreme cases, female foeticide and infanticide, as reported from some parts of India , because of this preference. However, this preference does not always result in such extreme behavior. Secondly, daughters may be deprived of education, medical attention, food and other necessities of life relative to sons. This practice is also reported to occur widely in India, particularly in the north, and especially, in the northwest of India Sen Prejudice against females and their deprivation in India, results in their under-representation in the total population in all age groups. Due to such factors, the number of " missing " women in India most likely amounts to more than 50 million, or around 5 per cent of its population. In fact, Kleson estimated it to be as high as 80 million in the early 1990s so the number of Indian " missing " women could now be well in excess of 50 million. The present paper tries to analyze the female feticide sociologically to understand its social implications on gender relationships and social formations. This paper is based on seven case studies using elaborative impressionistic model to understand the relationship of gender, patriarchy and modernity.