Kriti Foundation | Page 30

female foeticide in future pregnancies as their in-laws want a son. They refuse to take the step I took, as they don’t want to deny their children a stable home and a father. Even court has suggested that I should try to reconcile with my husband. ‘I and my daughters will be killed the day I move in with my husband’. The court said if I do not want to live with my husband I could divorce him through mutual consent. I said that I would do this, if the Hindu divorce law was amended and enabled a man to divorce his wife if she fails to provide him a son. My mistake according to my husband and in-laws is only that I conceived daughters and refused to abort them. Most of the poor patients who come to me go on giving birth to daughters, till they get a son. Sometimes I feel that our society feels that a woman’s only duty is to produce sons. A woman like me who does not consider being a female a congenital anomaly and refuses to abort her daughters is victimized by society. Most of the people I have encountered are of the view that my husband and in-laws are not wrong in wanting a son. I am being told that every family wants a son. A doctor colleague in a hospital, I was working in till recently, remarked “sex determination and female foeticide must be a rule rather than exception from the second pregnancy onwards. The childern have started interacting with their father, and now I am being threatened that if I do not withdraw my cases, they would grab the custody of my daughters. Therefore again today I am afraid for their lives. I saved them, but our system is again putting them in danger, if I continue to fight for justice.... WHY IS IT A CRIME BEING A WOMAN IN OUR COUNTRY WHICH WORSHIPS GODDESSES? Most of my doctor friends, who are married and have daughters, accept they will undergo sex determination and 23