Indian government wants to register all pregnant women to curb abortions of female fetuses

Indian women would be required to register their pregnancies and seek government permission for abortions under a proposal intended to curb abortions of female fetuses in the country, where boys are traditionally preferred.

"This will help to check both feticide and infant mortality," said Renuka Chowdhury, India's women and child development minister. "With this, mysterious abortions will become difficult."

A Times of India editorial on Saturday entitled "Abort the silly proposal" derided it as "ridiculous," saying that fetal gender screening is already a criminal offense that is not strictly enforced. Boys are preferred because they do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry.

"In the name of protecting the girl child, the state must not fall into the trap of disempowering women," the editorial said.

Abortions have been legal in India since 1971 and are viewed as a way to curb runaway population growth, but facilities are limited and rural women often resort to unsafe abortions. Gender-based abortions have been illegal since 1994.

Chowdhury told The Hindustan Times that women will only be allowed to have an abortion when there is a "valid and acceptable reason," but she did not elaborate.

Last year, a study by The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported that up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted each year in India, leading to the birth of nearly 10 million fewer girls over the past two decades. Also last year, a UNICEF report estimated that 7,000 Indian girls go unborn each day.

India's latest census data shows that the preference for boys has skewed the gender ratio in the population of more than 1.1 billion people. Experts say that sex-selective abortions reduced the number of girls per 1,000 boys from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.

The Indian government says it has clamped down on prenatal sex-determination tests. But social activists say many loopholes allow test providers to remain free.

Women's rights activists objected to the plan as a violation of privacy.

"It can lead to too much intrusion on somebody's private life," Ranjan Kumari, president of a group of women's non-governmental organizations called Women PowerConnect, told The Hindustan Times. "It will also be very difficult to obtain such data. Whether such a thing will be possible in a democracy, I doubt."

Last month, police in the northern state of Haryana found half-burned fetuses in a tank at a makeshift illegal 'hospital' and arrested a man for allegedly providing abortions without a license, The Times of India reported. The newspaper said the suspect told police that most of the 260 fetuses he aborted in the past 13 years were female.

The Indian government announced plans earlier this year to build orphanages for unwanted baby girls.