But while the family is believed to be the great engine driving social behaviour, there is the question of individual choices too that needs consideration. The recent Lancet study which reported that India has lost 10 million girls over the last two decades, had another nugget that went largely unnoticed. It pointed out that women with higher levels of education — Class X and beyond — report double the number of missing girls, as compared to illiterate mothers. This finding, incidentally, goes against the trend cited in the National Family Health Survey-2 (1998-99), which suggested that the preference for sons is relatively weak among women with more education and whose husbands have more education.

If the Lancet finding is true, it leads us to a difficult question. What if aware, literate Indian women, who are not necessarily influenced by their families, consciously seek to give birth to male children by exercising their right to abortion? Here we confront one of the biggest conundrums in this debate: a woman’s right to abortion — a crucial right that has been the centerpiece of many a feminist struggle the world over — militates against the right of the girl child to exist, which is again a crucial social and feminist concern. How do we reconcile these two rights? Or, more to the point, is it possible to reconcile these two rights? Incidentally, the question was raised by feminist scholar, Zarina Bhatta, during a public conversation between Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum last month. Both the Nobel laureate and internationally renowned professor of ethics found it difficult to come up with a neat answer to it.

... contd.