Crackdown on female foeticide
The Haryana government is pulling out all stops to confront the scourge that the state had once gained notoriety for — gender-based sex-selection and female foeticide, the practice of terminating a pregnancy when it is determined that the foetus is female. The year 2024 ended with a drop of six points in Haryana’s sex ratio — 910 female births per 1,000 males. Alarmed by the dip and reports of use of pre-natal diagnostic technologies to determine the sex of the foetus despite the ban, a State Task Force (STF) was constituted in February this year, with Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Sudhir Rajpal in charge. The mandate was to monitor every facet of the skewed sex ratio and plug the holes in a state known for its patriarchal mores and preference for a boy.
