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‘Shocked’ Hc rejects couple’s sex test plea
Affluent Couple Wanted To ‘Balance” Their Family
Sex selection is not only against the spirit of the Indian Constitution, it insults and humiliates womanhood. It violates a woman’s right to life. This is perhaps the greatest argument in favour of the ban on pr-natal sex determination tests in India,” said the Bombay High Court on Thursday as it threw out a petition pleading that affluent couples with same sex children be allowed to conduct such tests to “balance their families.”
The judgment came from a division Bench comprising CJ swatanter Kumar and Justice Ranjana Desai but was written by the latter who is among the few women judges in the High Court.
The judgment rejected the challenge to the constitutional validity of the provisions of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act which banned pre-natal diagnostic tests to verify the sex of unborn child.
The pettion was field by a couple,Vijay and Kirti Sharma, residents of Lokhandwala, on grounds of alleged inequality between the provisions of the Pre-Natal Act and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. The douple who had two daughters and wanted a son to create a “balance” in their family wanted to be ale to conduct the pre-natal test so that could choose a male child. Their reasoning which Justice Desai said was “shocking “, was that legislators have not considered the “mental anguish” a mother would be put to when she finds that the other child is the same sex as the first one.The Sharmas also argued that affluent couples who have the financial and social means should be allowed to choose as opposed to couples who use such tests to have only male children.
What the judges found most shocking was the couple’s submission that for a “less advanced society” like India where a “patriarchal mindset exists” and where a “girl child is not socially accepted,” it is better that such children are not born. Justice Desai said this argument alone reinforced the decission to uphold the ban on pre-natal sex determination test.
“It is unfortunate that people should be under the influence of outdated notions regarding sons versus daughters. As long as such notions exist, the girl child will be unwanted,” the judgment said, nothing the statistics providedd by the ministry of health and family welfare on ther low ratio of girls to boys, especially in afflunet areas of north India.
“A stage may soon come when it would be difficult to make up for the missing girls,” the ministry said. The court said in the most prosperous parts of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Gujarat, hte ratio was already less than 900 girls for every 1,000 boys.
In the Kurkshetra district of Haryana, it was as low as 770 girls per 1,000 boys. The court said that while the MTP law was meant for certain cases where a mother’s life and helth, both mental and physical, might be endangered or where a child may be bron with abnormalities, it in no way dealt with sex selection as a basis for a legal abortion of a foetus.
“Medical termination of pregnancy is not prompted by unwanted sex of the foetus,” the court noted and hence said there was no question of inequal treatment to women under this law and the law banning pre-natal sex tests. No distinction can be drawn between couples who want to choose a male child and those who want to abort a female foetus, said the court.
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