The Hindu Business Line : Muddling the message

We have to show how women should be cared for — how daughters should be encouraged to be independent... Only then the issue of declining sex ratio will be addressed.

In the shadow: The preference for a male child leaves the girl child vulnerable to a lifetime of discrimination. - K. MURALI KUMAR

An image of a knife piercing a foetus; a social worker warning in a play that aborting a foetus amounts to murder; a female `foetus' screaming during a radio programme, "don't kill me" — in India, there is no escaping slogans against female foeticide. But here's the worry: increasingly, these campaigns are inadvertently sending out anti-abortion signals. In fact, some recent public information campaigns on the issue seem to imply that it is abortion — not the act of sex determination — that is punishable.

Take the recent ad issued by the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) in the city's leading newspapers. It showed a human hand knifing a foetus; the foetus was enclosed in a circle that formed part of the pictorial sign for `woman'. The ad read: "Put an end to turning wombs to tombs." The ad was released as part of DCW's `Laadli' (meaning `most treasured' in Hindi) campaign to save the girl child. The campaign was launched with much fanfare by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

Needless to say, DCW's intended message — Stop Female Foeticide — is crucial beyond question. There is an urgent need to stop this violence against women.

According to a recent study published in the Lancet, around 5 lakh female foetuses are aborted every year in India on account of prenatal sex determination and selective abortion. The Indian Medical Association claims the figure is much higher. Cities like Delhi have highly imbalanced sex ratios. According to the municipal authorities, some posh Delhi localities have registered sex ratios as low as 762 girls per 1,000 boys.

But ads like the one brought out by DCW, with their overpowering visuals, throw out the baby with the bathwater. They suggest: Don't abort, it is punishable by law.

Missing the meaning

Although the ad mentions somewhere in the copy that "female foeticide is a crime against women and humanity", the lasting impression that a reader takes away is, "it" (primarily the act of terminating a foetus) amounts to "murder before birth and is punishable by law".

Some of these ads have been around for a while. In fact, the visual of a foetus being attacked by a knife appears often in television campaigns and posters issued in public interest.

Many national radio spots use a vocabulary that makes the anti-abortion message more stark — female foeticide is often referred to as `bhroon hatya', which in Hindi means `murder of a foetus'. Some equate bhroon hatya with `maha paap' — a huge sin. Often the radio spots, and even some programmes on the issue of low sex ratio produced by All India Radio (like in the State of Jharkhand), have girl foetuses crying out to their mothers: "Don't kill me."

One radio spot, very popular on a national channel, has the entire message delivered by a girl in her mother's womb, saying something to this effect: "I was so comfortable in your womb, mother... I remember the taste of different foods you ate... one day you and dad decided to end my life... "

In 2003, Delhi-based NGO Population Council studied the impact of publicity material based on abortion and sex selection in one district of Rajasthan. Most material did not distinguish sex selective abortion from other reasons for abortions.

Confused wording

Interestingly, all abortion-related material was from an abortion service agency; the government did not circulate anything on this issue. However, the government's sex selection material had several words that added to the general confusion: `shishu ki ling jaanch' (determining the sex of the child — not a foetus), `garbhastya shishu ki hatya' (murder of a child — not a foetus — in the womb).

According to the study, none of the posters made by the government clarified that it is sex selective abortion that is illegal, not abortion per se. This is what one man said he understood: all abortions are done after sex determination; abortion is illegal.

Kiran Walia, Chairperson of DCW, agrees that messages in some of the ads could be misunderstood. "Women have fought for their abortion rights. We will see how we can communicate messages that don't mislead people or question this right."

India legalised abortion as far back as 1971. Sex selective abortion, on the other hand, has been illegal since the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Selection) Act (PNDT Act) was enacted in 1996, and amended to the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act in 2002. Clearly, while abortion per se is legal, sex selection, and sex selective termination of female foetuses is not.

Since the early 1990s, after people discovered the destructive use of technology — that ultrasound machines could tell the sex of the child — the right to abortion has often been used to selectively terminate female foetuses. `Failure of contraception', as stipulated in the MTP Act, is the reason given in most cases where female foetuses are aborted.

Dr Mira Shiva — who has been working on gender and health issues for over 20 years and has done commendable research on the prevention of misuse of medical technology — says the issue is a very complex one. She agrees that some of the sex ratio campaigns could tone down their hysterical pitch.

Need for holistic view

Mira asks why these campaigns don't talk about gender violence that women are subject to throughout their lives: a girl child is given less to eat; she is denied medical care and education; she later suffers domestic violence and is tortured for both dowry and failure to produce a male child, or just a child. "The imbalanced sex ratio is a manifestation of the little value we have for women and the dehumanisation of society," says Mira.

Let's look at the women who go in for sex selection. Poor women, under pressure from the two-child family norm, prefer to have two boys instead of two girls. Women from privileged backgrounds, who want to mother only one child, again opt for a boy. Of course, many women — poor or privileged — do so to escape torture from in-laws or husbands.

"There is a greater need to seriously campaign on how to value women — not just express it in the media but also show at the school level, inside homes etc," declares Mira. "We need to communicate what would be the social, cultural and economic implications of this kind of violence.

"We have to show how women should be cared for — how daughters should be encouraged to be independent... Only then the issue of declining sex ratio will be addressed."

Even the ads, a development communication expert says, instead of often graphically depicting foeticide or talking about it, could target senior members in the family who actually influence sex preferences. Maybe we could have ads that talk about sex determination but also mention that abortion is legal? Maybe, a nurse asking for laddoos when a girl is born?