Karnataka, 20 fetuses found under a bridge, they were all girls
Mumbai (AsiaNews) - At least 20 female fetuses girls were found under a bridge in the city of Sankeshwar (district of Belgaum, Karnataka), yesterday afternoon. According to local police, some private clinics would have thrown the lifeless little bodies into the river Hiranyakeshi, after practicing selective abortions on women following tests - illegal in India - to determine the sex. According to rumours, for years these structures have been dumping female fetuses in that area.
SV Munyal, an official of the local health department, denies the responsibility of local clinics and hospitals. However, in the district of Belgaum the imbalance between men and women is high. According to the latest national census (Census 2011), the sex ratio (number of females per 1000 males) total is 969 to 1000. That of children under 6 years of age is 931 to 1000. It is also known that many structures possess machinery to determine the sex of the foetus.
For Pascoal Carvalho, a Mumbai doctor and member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, female feticide "is perhaps one of the worst forms of gender-based violence, in which a women are denied the most simple and fundamental right: the right to life" . In Indian society, the doctor told AsiaNews, this practice "has become an alarming social problem, because it involves the systematic and increasing elimination of women. It is urgent to reverse the demographic imbalance [caused by selective abortions, ed] and to start a radical social transformation. "
"The spread of private hospitals - Carvalho explains to AsiaNews - and the use of tests to determine the sex of the fetus have made selective abortions a real business, strengthening the deep-rooted discrimination against girls." In 1994 the government enacted the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technologies Act (PNDT), which makes it illegal to use special tests to determine the sex of the foetus. However, the law has not stopped the spread of feticide and female infanticide
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