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CHENNAI, INDIA, April 26,2003: In a move against female feticide, the Tamil Nadu Medical Council (TNMC) declared today that it would come down heavily against doctors participating in discriminatory abortions of girls, and will prevent them from practicing medicine if necessary. Speakers attending a meeting on the “Role of Doctors in Halting the Declining Sex Ratio and Implementation of the Prenatal Diagnostics Tests Prevention Act,” said they hold the medical fraternity “squarely responsible” for the high incidence of female feticide in the country. Doctors, they said, were helping parents kill girls before birth through abortions after determining the sex of the unborn child using scanning (ultrasound) devices. TNMC president, M. Balasubramanian, said the medical fraternity should not dismiss the accusations lightly. On their entrance to the profession, doctors were clearly instructed in a booklet on medical ethics that female feticide was a heinous crime. Sabu M. George, an independent researcher, said most of Tamil Nadu was not safe for girls, and that the sex ratio in nearly all the State’s districts had declined in the last 10 years. The girl child sex ratio in the State has declined from 1010 for 1000 boys in 1941, to 948 in 1991 and 939 in 2001.

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