|
Female Foeticide - Role of IMA
Dr.O.P.S.Kande
Past
State President IMA Punjab
Member,
State Advisory Committee (PNDT) Govt.of Punjab
**************************************************************************************************
Discrimination against the Girl Child begins before birth and
the societal mind set is biased against her since times .This
was in the form of wide spread Female Infanticide , when the
girl child was done to death immediately after birth, which with
advent of advance technology transformed into Female Foeticide
i.e. killing the girl child in the womb, by knowing the Sex of
the unborn child and more recently by selecting the
sex-chromosomes to have pregnancy with sex of choice and thus
not allowing the girls to come in the world . All the three
phenomena are leading to the ‘missing girls’ and drastic fall in
number of girl-children and thus a ‘skewed sex ratio’ which is
going to have dangerous impact on coming generations and one can
easily imagine , what will happen to society without “woman”.
All members of society will have to think over its consequences
& find out the ways and means to stop this but ‘doctors’ as a
community Ethically committed to ‘protect the life’ have onus to
stop the menace.
The role of a doctor in the process of Female Foeticide is to
identify the victim i.e. Female Foetus . If a family with
intentions to know the sex of the unborn child in womb of a
pregnant women , approaches a doctor , its is moral , ethical
and lawful duty of the doctor to ‘ Refuse’ revealing’ the sex of
the foetus ( unborn child in womb) and should not do any act to
identify the victim. If the doctor , with greed of making quick
money acts in anyway to do sex determination he thus identifies
the victim to be a ‘Female ‘ and becomes part of team of
perpetuators of the crime of ‘killing’ as now the victim will be
killed by abortionist – again a doctor ( may be qualified and
unqualified ) . The unlawful activity of sex –determination and
sex-selective abortions is a heinous crime and cannot be done
without active participation of members of medical profession.
Unfortunately the advent of technology has been widely and
openly misused by medical profession to make quick money by
exploiting societal mind set of ‘Son Preference’ and ‘Daughter
dis-preference’.Indian Medical Association , established by the forefathers and
doyens of Medical Profession in 1928 , with the aim to unite the
medical professionals to fight for their rights and take part in
Indian Freedom movement , to-day is the largest NGO of the WORLD
and the single largest representative of the profession. The
Association is no longer confined to doctors in private practice
but have included Govt. doctors too as its members and today it
represents 200000 doctors all over the country with 29 State
Branches and 1800 local branches. The association takes care of
the welfare of its members and has its duties to act as a ‘watch
– dog’ to stop its members and other members of medical
profession from indulging into any unlawful and immoral
activity.
This was a initiative from IMA that Govt. was requested to
constitute Appropriate Authorities in State under PNDT Act 1994
promulgated to check the heinous crime of Female Foeticide and
association held first of its kind meet with religious leaders.
IMA Punjab deserves the credit of giving first book on “Female
Foeticide : A crime – Let us Fight it out” released on 18th.November
2001 and association published special bulletins and IMA News
publications on Female Foeticide. The Association has taken the
arduous task of making the members of medical profession ,
understand the implications of Sex-determination and
Sex-selective abortions and have gone to the extant of mass
awareness and taking active part in implementation of PNDT Act
1994 and accompany the inspecting and raiding parties to catch
the doctors , violating the Act. Association have given full
support to the Govt. and have now started playing a ‘Pro-active’
role by reporting cases of suspected sex-determination and
sex-selective abortion, even if its members reporting such cases
have to face wrath of their colleagues by way of threat to life,
loss of practice and cases in Human Rights Commissions.
Association has taken active part in administrating oath to its
members to follow the PNDT Act and NOT TO do anything which will
lead to Female Foeticide and not to do pre-selection of sex by
Chromosomal separation. Association has also taken active part
in public awareness by way of articles, posters , greeting cards
and seminars, exhibitions and also holding seminars on awareness
among their own fraternity members . Thus Indian Medical
Association is committed to fight the menace of Female Foeticide
with all its strength and will not protect any member of medical
profession , indulging in any way in any activity leading to
disturbance of sex-ration of the country , realizing our duty to
create a healthy society.
|
