New Delhi: Advertisements as “Why Foeticide? Do you want to give birth to desired progeny? Male or Female Child. You can choose your baby’s sex yourself. For details contact…”
Despite of strictly ban of sex determination tests and pre-conception technologies there are still many advertisements encouraging such things which did not stopped yet.
The Supreme Court ordered the Union health and family welfare ministry to immediately set up a “nodal agency” to ban all the ads of “sex determination” tests and the information related to it.
Though the doctors illegally continue to droop the ‘bait’ of a male child as per the suggestion they need not resort to foeticide as they could now choose the sex of their child before conception.
This kind of advertisements has been seen in smaller magazines so that they couldn’t get caught in eyes of the law.
Similarly the advertisement which was came into sight was from the two doctors in Jabalpur and Mandla in Madhya Pradesh in Delhi-based magazine Life Positive, May issue, whose advisers include the popular persons as yoga guru B K S Iyengar, Mark Tully and Kiran Bedi, while former CBI director D R Kaarthikeyan is president.
Sanjay Parikh, legal counsel for the NGOs who had filed PIL in the Supreme Court on the slow implementation of the Act said, “This advertisement is a clear violation of the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT). The fact is that you cannot choose the sex of your child. Anybody using any technique or advertising a technique which helps determine an unborn child’s sex is illegal… they can be prosecuted.”
According to Telegraph reports, Justice Misra said, “There can be no doubt that there has to be freedom for access to information, but… such freedom cannot violate a law that holds the field. Be it noted that this court has expressed concern over the decline in sex ratio.”
“You cannot have and should not have anything on website that carries any propaganda…. Whether one will have a boy or a girl, that kind of information is not necessary in India,” he added.
“We are not using ultrasound machines or disclosing the sex of a child… nor are we asking people to abort in case it is a female child” said, Sanjay Gupta, the Jabalpur-based doctor who placed the advertisement, feigned ignorance about the amended Act told to Times of India.
He said he was giving advice to the people about the procedures they adopt before and after conception to help choose the sex of their child, he claimed. He also published similar ads in local newspapers.
Editor of Life Positive, Pravin Chopra, admitted he was unwilling to accept the advertisement but the doctors assured him they were not violating the law.
“We were not aware that the PNDT Act had been amended to cover the pre-conception techniques …it is a one off ad and we will not accept them in the future,” Chopra added.