MANGALURU: Social activists have attributed illegal abortions taking place clandestinely in the hospitals to the declining child sex ratio (CSR) in Dakshina Kannada district. With 947 females for every 1,000 males, the district is below the state average of 948.
At an interaction programme held at Press Club in city on Thursday, social activist and Prajna Counseling Centre managing trustee Prof Hilda Rayappan said gynaecologists tell them about countless people going for Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) in the district without citing the exact reason.
Though MTP Act mandates pregnant women and gynaecologists to give reasons for the termination in the prescribed format, it is not being followed seriously in the district. “Gynaecologists admit that they simply mention all abortions as ‘spontaneous’. The patients are refusing to give reasons and doctors are also not insisting.”
Hilda felt counselling should be made mandatory for all cases of termination and stressed the need for collective collaborative efforts and action to arrest the declining child sex ratio.
Another social activist Prof Rita Noronha said in some villages they came to know from people about suspicious missing pregnancy of women and some pregnant women going missing from villages indicating that they might have terminated the pregnancies.
She denied the possibility of rise in miscarriages of female foetus. “Miscarriage of male foetus is normally high and female foetus will have strong immunity.”
She said the situation may improve if there is change in people’s ‘mindset’ that treats girl child as burden, our culture in which gender disparity is embedded, women are involved in decision-making of the family among others.
Social activist Merlin Martiz said people should realise that less number of females will also create lot of problems in society. In some communities, men are single because there are no women to marry. Because of skewed sex ratio, she said the average marrying age of females in Dakshina Kannada has come down to 21 from 24, which is an indication that the education and life of women is at stake.