legal battle over globally advertising pre-birth sex determination through websites such Google India, Yahoo India, and Microsoft Corporation is underway.
NEW DELHI: A legal battle over globally advertising pre-birth sex determination through websites such Google India, Yahoo India, and Microsoft Corporation is underway, as the supreme court has taken a strong exception to the violation of country’s Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act.
The supreme court has issued notices to websites that “promote” techniques, which are discriminatory to the female child.
Concerned with the killing of foetuses carrying female babies, Dr Sabu Mathew George, who has been in the forefront of battle against this malaise, moved the court to stall objectionable and illegal advertisements and information being put up at the popular websites.
Dr George’s petition claims that certain organisations engaged in illegally promoting techniques and products for the selection of an unborn child’s sex use the websites to provide links on their search engines. “It is illegal and a penal offence,” says an anguished George.
He accuses the websites of making a premeditated attempt to aim at Indian users with advertisements that claim to help in the selection of a child’s sex.
The PNDT Act, 1994, prohibits tests that allow people to know the gender of an unborn child - a law designed to tackle widespread abortion of female foetuses. “These companies are making a lot of money by doing highly targeted and selective advertising of these products,” said George.
The Act intends to forbid “the misuse of techniques for the purpose of pre-natal sex determination leading to female foeticide”. In India, as in other countries, female children are often valued less than male children, a tradition that prompts some parents to terminate pregnancies that would result in the birth of a female infant.
According to a report, 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in the past two decades in India. UK newspaper Guardian also says Indian parents abort half a million female fetuses a year. It is reported that a search for “sex selection” on Google India returns no text ads, in contrast to 63 sponsored links for the same keywords at Google.com.
Yahoo India likewise returns no sponsored results for those keywords. A Microsoft Live Search conducted through MSN India returned two search ads offering information about gender selection.
Union ministry of health and family welfare and ministry of communications and IT have also been made respondents in this case, as they did not take any action against the three companies, although the offenses were brought to their notice, George says.
It is suggested that since 1994, more than 400 cases have been filed under the law, resulting in only two convictions — a fine of Rs300, and another fine of Rs4,000.
These ministries have already asked Information Technology ministry to formulate proper guidelines for tackle such dodges.
Recently, the WCD ministry proposed a ban on the new home-based gender testing kits now being sold openly in the Indian market.
These kits are sold by doctors who carry out online sex determination tests in connivance with laboratories in the US.
The gender determination of the foetus is conducted through a blood test by the fifth week of pregnancy. The result is known within three days by mailing the test overnight to labs in the US.
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