Indian experts dispute female abortions study

NEW DELHI: Indian experts on Wednesday said a new study which found that some 10 million female foetuses may have been aborted in the country in the past 20 years was sensationalist and inaccurate. 

The study, published online Monday by British medical journal The Lancet, said that the practice of selective abortion was due to a traditional preference for boys in India. 

"It is a sensational piece of work. We are very, very concerned about this study," said activist Sabu George, who has been campaigning against the practice of foeticide for more than two decades.   

"An unreasonable estimate will undermine the issue," he said.   For the study, researchers based in Canada and India looked through data from a national survey, conducted among 1.1 million households in 1998, and at information about 133,738 births that took place in 1997. 

 They found that in cases where the preceding child was a girl, the gender ratio for a second birth was just 759 girls to 1,000 boys.

And when the two previous children were girls, this ratio fell even further, to 719 girls to 1,000 boys.

On the other hand, when the preceding child or children were male, the gender ratio among successive births was about the same. 

Based on the natural sex ratio in other countries, around 13.6-13.8 million girls should have been born in India in 1997 -- but the actual number was 13.1 million.

"We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly," said one of the authors, Prabhat Jha of St. Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada.   

"This is not a conservative estimate at all," said George, citing the findings of an earlier study which said that the number of foeticides was 1.5 million during 1994-2001 -- considerably below half a million a year.   

"This 10 million figure is impossible. It can be very misleading to base the figures on the average, which varies greatly each year," said Institute of Economic Growth professor S.C. Gulati, who conducted that study.   

Gulati estimated that the correct figure was close to 0.29 million selective abortions each year, based on the country's birth rate and the present sex ratio. 

"If there were half a million foeticides a year, the sex ratio would have been very skewed indeed," he said.   

Government figures in India show that the abortion of female foetuses has brought down the ratio from 972 women for every 1,000 men in 1901 to just 933 in 2001. 

In developed countries, the ratio is in favour of women because they live longer than men. George said it was wrong to base findings for a 20-year period on the average for 1997, as the number of selective abortions had been much lower before ultrasound screening became easily available in the mid-1990s.   

The experts agree that selective abortion cases shot up dramatically after the technology became much cheaper after 1995, even though it was available in the 1980s. 

The law bans ultrasound screening for sex determination, but the practice is rampant as the risk of prosecution is low. Activists say that the illegal practice also flourishes because it generates huge business for doctors.   

They said that it is difficult to arrive at a conclusive figure for foeticides as the system of birth registration in India is very weak.  The Lancet study comes on the heels of a report last October by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which warned that foeticide was driving India towards a gender imbalance with alarming social consequences.   

Afghanistan, China, Nepal, Pakistan and South Korea face similar problems, UNFPA said.