The Indian government have officially banned taking pre-natal tests solely to determine the sex of a fetus; under Indian law, ending a pregnancy only because the fetus is female is already outlawed, although the practice is said to be still common.

'Women are pressured to have sons for reasons ranging from the desire of fathers to have their names and family traditions carried on by a male line, to the Hindu tradition of having the oldest son light a parent's funeral pyre. There is also the tradition of dowry, under which families with sons demand payments from their brides' families.'

'Geeta Mukherjee, a 70-year-old veteran of India's independence movement who has been campaigning for women's rights for decades as a Member of Parliament. "Our society is absolutely male-dominated. It is the men who decide how many children they will have, and whether any of them will be girls. That is the condition of our country." '

'Census counts in India have shown a trend that many demographers consider alarming: from 972 females for every 1,000 males in 1901, to 934 in 1981, and 927 in 1991. In Haryana, a populous northern state that surrounds Delhi, the figure in 1991 dipped to 874 females for every 1,000 men, a disproportion said to be virtually unprecedented in similar counts around the world, except in countries where the male population had been decimated by war'

from New York Times today