India To Register Pregnancies To Fight Foeticide

Another act of stupidity emanates from the hallways of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The Hon’ble Minister, you can see her in action here on YouTube, would like to register all pregnancies in the country to prevent foeticide. Forget the logistics involved. I would like to see the Hon’ble Minister, taking her daughter to the responsible Govt Office and saying to the chap on duty, “Here is my daughter and she is pregnant, the father is my son-in-law, please register the pregnancy.”

Another bit player in this silly act is the Minister Ambumani Ramdoss. He has allegedly been pushing for the appointments of doctors to AIIMS, the premier health care institute, based on their caste and not on the strength of their credentials.

Back to this story, I have a few questions:

• Apart from the issues of privacy involved, we can toss in the issue of religion. Can you imagine a Muslim couple doing this? or will they be exempt to fend off the backlash?
• What about the conservative people in the cow belt? Would they be willing to parade their pregnant wives before unknown men or women?
• How about this situation where a women unfortunately has an abortion due to reasons beyond her control and the foetus is a female? Will she be booked for murder?
• What if a woman wants to abort regardless? Aren’t we now infringing on the reproductive rights for women? The feminists, internationally, will be up in arms.
• What does one do if a woman has an abortion just because she wants a male child and gets a certificate from a doctor saying that the pregnancy was putting her life at risk?

And then think about logistics involved in implementing this law.

You can read about the whole thing here.

All in all, this is a classic example of a self goal, as this law is bound to piss off the feminists, internationally.

Here is Gloria Steinem saying: “I would say that a crucial contribution of feminism is to add reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right. Controlling women’s bodies as the most basic means of production, the means of reproduction, is the origin of patriarchy; thus of domination and hierarchy. Women are reversing that process by seizing control of the means of reproduction, and restoring balance.”

Righto! and we can see women standing before the Babus and saying that “Hey! We are pregnant! Register it!” What would good old Gloria say to that ?

At the least, this is an act of stupidity, literally.

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