Amniocentesis and Sex Selection

Abstract

How does one analytically locate the social phenomenon manifested in India during the last few years since the advent of sex-selection technology in the mid- 70s? We must seek to contextualise it within several value debates (which aspire to become systems) - of gender equality, reproductive freedom, the role of state control over private lives (ostensibly for the public good), medical responsibility and social justice. Other elements in this contextual canvas, to increase its complexity, are certain dynamic social institutions - the family, law, culture,
religion, the social construction of gender, public policies and the social role or use of technology. Three other broader issues that help determine the texture and shape of the canvas are the widely differing perspectives in the global debates on the population-development relationship, the past and future roles of science and rationalism per se, and the problems of management of power - economic, political, technological (or knowledge-based) - in a period of dissolving political entities that had provided a semblance of balance and shape of global power relations.