Soon men in Theni district may face difficulty in finding a life partner, if we were to go by results of a study conducted by the Society for Campaign Against Sex Selective Abortion (CASSA), Madurai.
The study found that marriageable age group women (aged 18-24) are just 779 per 1,000 men, which means there are only 9,810 females for 12,596 males.
“Only three girls are available for four boys. So it is high time the government strictly monitored scanning and abortion centres to prevent sex selection at birth,” said M Jeeva, a core team member of CASSA, Tamil Nadu. For the study, CASSA selected 50,534 families from five primary health centres, where the sex ratio at birth showed improvement in 2010, compared to 2008.
“This sudden improvement... provoked us to do the sample study. For example, in 2000, the sex ratio at birth was below 952. Even in 2010 in some areas of 11 PHCs and five municipalities, the ratio was below 900 and 800 respectively,” said Jeeva.
Thirty enumerators conducted the survey at Varusanadu, Devadanapatti, Odaipatti, Kottur and Kombai for two months. Regardless of the sex of the first baby, 40.7 per cent of the surveyed families preferred males as the second offspring, while 32.3 per cent preferred females as the second child. It indicated that sex-selective abortions take place before the second child’s birth.
“Sex-selective abortions, not prevalent 20 years ago, have increased during the last six years,” Jeeva said.