India – Sons at any cost

Three decades after the PCPNDT Act, sex determination rackets thrive across India, proving laws alone can’t defeat a son-obsessed culture.

Oct 19, 2025
Vitasta Kaul

In September 2025, Karnataka’s Health Department conducted a covert operation in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to prevent a woman from undergoing illegal prenatal sex determination. The 30-year-old from Mandya district, already a mother of three daughters, had approached an agent across the State border after learning she could determine the sex of her foetus. When told the foetus was female, she planned to terminate the pregnancy in her fifth month. Officials from both States coordinated a decoy operation that dismantled the illegal network facilitating these cross-border procedures.

It was not an isolated case. In April, Haryana’s Rohtak district authorities busted a sex-determination racket operating out of neighbouring Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh. Over 120 FIRs have been registered this year in the State for illegal abortion practices, including unlawful sale of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) kits, while nearly 300 of Haryana’s 1,500 MTP centres have had their registration cancelled or voluntarily surrendered. In Ahmedabad, a June raid uncovered a radiologist and nurse conducting sex-determination tests and abortions at guesthouses and patients’ homes.

Continued: https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/illegal-sex-determination-india-pcpndt-failure/article70181889.ece

India – Vanishing Daughters Part 4: Testimonies of women who have seen it all

Illegal sex determination and unsafe abortions continue to plague Haryana, claiming lives and exposing systemic legal failures, while women bear the brunt of this gender-biased crisis.

Sreya Chatterjee
Apr 14, 2025

In India’s northern state of Haryana, where the gender ratio has long been skewed against girls, the brutal consequences of illegal sex determination supported by unauthorised abortion are not just reflected in numbers—they are etched in the broken voices of the women left behind.

In this fourth instalment of our investigative series, The Vanishing Daughters, we travelled deep into the villages of Haryana to meet the families and survivors of a war waged silently, but violently, against unborn girls. Their testimonies lay bare a harrowing truth: while sex-selective abortions continue despite legal bans, it is the women—wives, daughters, mothers—who pay the ultimate price of a shady industry exploiting loopholes.

Continued: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/vanishing-daughters-part-four-beti-bachao-beti-padhao-sex-determination-gender-bias-abortion-bride-trafficking-2708865-2025-04-14

India – Haryana govt shuts 300 abortion centres, another 23 issued show-cause notices

The Haryana State Drugs Controller has been tasked with compiling a list of wholesalers and stockists of medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) kits, restricting their sale exclusively to registered MTP centres.

By: Express News Service
April 13, 2025

The Haryana government Thursday announced that the registrations of 300 medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) centres in the state have been cancelled.

The closed centres had allegedly failed to share and update information concerning its gynaecologists and abortion data, among others.

Continued: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/abortion-centres-shut-haryana-government-notices-9940381/

14.04.2025

India – The deep roots of daughter discrimination: Why laws alone can’t stop sex-selective abortion

Saturday, March 15, 2025

By Surjit Singh Flora

What you need to know:
Though laws like India's PCPNDT Act exist to prevent sex-selective abortion, our global community continues to witness the disappearance of millions of daughters.
Legal frameworks alone fail without addressing the deep-rooted cultural values that see daughters as burdens and sons as providers.
Only when we combine legal protections with ethical awakening in our communities can we truly achieve gender equality that values every child regardless of sex.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/news/gender/the-deep-roots-of-daughter-discrimination-why-laws-alone-can-t-stop-sex-selective-abortion--4962130

15.03.2025

Commentary

female foeticide

gender discrimination

PCPNDT Act

sex selection abortion

sex-selective abortion

India – Arrest of doctor for 242 illegal abortions highlights how woman’s rights over body is a travesty

Ironically, it is women who are largely the pall-bearers of this self-inflicting, self-indicting and self-violating mindset.

by Bala Chauhan
04th December 2023

BENGALURU : The arrest of a doctor, Chandan Ballal, and his lab technician Nisar, who allegedly conducted more than 900 illegal abortions over the past three years at a hospital in Mysuru, and the arrest of nine persons in the Byappanahalli police station jurisdiction in Bengaluru, for allegedly performing 242 illegal abortions in the last three months, have raised serious concerns over two issues -- both are anchored around women’s rights, or lack of them, over their reproductive health.

While there’s not much clarity on whether all these said illegal abortions were carried out after the sex of the foetus was disclosed to the couple by the radiologist, or because of other reasons, the incidents confirm that women lack authority or propriety over their own reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2023/dec/04/arrest-of-doctor-for-242-illegal-abortions-highlights-how-womans-rights-overbody-is-a-travesty-2638463.html

India – The Unwanted Daughters of Rajasthan: Sex Determination And Female Foeticide

A strong preference for boys means many families try to find out the sex of the child illegally, and abort the foetus if it's a girl, or many born girls are unwanted and treated badly.

By Jigyasa Mishra
27 Mar, 2023

Jaipur (Rajasthan): “Bojha, Aanachhi, Kachri, Nirasha are some popular names given to girls born as a second or third child here,” says Kachri Bai, who lives in the rural outskirts of Jaipur, the capital of the western state of Rajasthan.

Bojha means burden, Aanachhi means unwanted or bad, Kachri means garbage and Nirasha means gloom. Kachri bai is the third girl in the family, after her sisters Roshni and Renu.

Continued; https://www.indiaspend.com/gendercheck/the-unwanted-daughters-of-rajasthan-sex-determination-and-female-foeticide-857635

‘Families want a son at any cost’: the women forced to abort female foetuses in India

Laali and Meenakshi’s unborn daughters are among the country’s 46 million ‘missing’ women and girls over the past 50 years

Yashraj Sharma
Mon 27 Dec 2021

Laali was alone at home when she realised her legs were drenched in blood. The bleeding did not stop for eight hours. As she fell unconscious, the 25-year-old thought she would die alongside the foetus she was losing.

She had been three months pregnant when she was taken for prenatal sex determination. “When I learned it was a girl, I started feeling as though I was suffocating,” she says.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/27/families-want-a-son-at-any-cost-the-women-forced-to-abort-female-foetuses-in-india

Nepal – Sex-selective abortion continues unabated

Sex-selective abortion continues unabated

Published: October 14, 2018

Female foeticide has caused the number of male children to go up in Rupandehi.

A study jointly carried out by CIWIN Nepal and District Public Health Office, Rupandehi, shows that sex-selective abortion is widespread even among educated and well-off families in urban areas.

According to Rupandehi’s public health inspector Krishna Pokhrel, when 100 girls were born, the number of male births stood at 130 last year.

Continued: https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/sex-selective-abortion-continues-unabated/

14.10.2018