Stop Son Preference in Laws and Their Implementation!

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

At a recently held state-level training programme on the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques  (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, social circumstances that drive the ‘son preference’ were factored as responsible for the adverse sex ratio. It is to be noted that Goa’s child sex ratio, according to the last census of 2011, stands at 942 females per 1000 males. It would seem that the son preference even informs law making, law implementation, law interpretation, or omission in synchronizing new laws with relatively progressive past laws. There are umpteen examples that can be given to illustrate this problem. (more…)