The one thing a diagnostic centre may never advertise

If your clinic owns an ultrasound machine, a scanner or any imaging equipment, a criminal statute governs part of what you publish on your website. It applies whether or not you do any prenatal work at all.

We audited fifteen healthcare marketing agencies operating in India. Not one of them mentions it.

The statute is section 22 of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994.

What the section says

(1) No person, organization, Genetic Counselling Centre, Genetic Laboratory or Genetic Clinic, including clinic, laboratory or centre having ultrasound machine or imaging machine or scanner or any other technology capable of undertaking determination of sex of foetus or sex selection shall issue, publish, distribute, communicate or cause to be issued, published, distributed or communicated any advertisement, in any form, including internet, regarding facilities of pre-natal determination of sex or sex selection before conception available at such centre, laboratory, clinic or at any other place.

(3) Any person who contravenes the provisions of sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees.

PCPNDT Act 1994, s22(1) and s22(3). The Explanation to the section defines advertisement to include “any notice, circular, label, wrapper or any other document including advertisement through internet or any other media in electronic or print form”.

Three things practices get wrong

1. It binds you by the machine you own

Most clinics assume the Act reaches only centres offering prenatal diagnostics. Read the words again: including clinic, laboratory or centre having ultrasound machine or imaging machine or scanner. The trigger is possession of the equipment, not the service advertised. A general diagnostic imaging centre that has never performed a prenatal scan is inside the section.

2. Your website is expressly covered

The Act names the internet directly, in the operative subsection and again in the Explanation. Page copy, blog posts, meta descriptions, paid search text and social posts are all “advertisement” here. There is no argument that a website sits outside the section, because the section says it does not.

3. Subsection (2) is drafted to catch indirect wording

Subsection (2) prohibits advertising prenatal or pre-conception sex determination “by any means whatsoever, scientific or otherwise”. That phrasing exists to reach oblique and coded language, not only explicit offers.

The penalty that actually matters

What this does not mean

We will not overstate this, because overstating it is how compliance advice stops being useful.

Section 22 restricts one category of content: advertising the availability of prenatal sex determination or pre-conception sex selection. An imaging centre advertising MRI knee scans, CT angiography or routine obstetric ultrasound is not in breach of section 22.

The section reaches every centre that owns a scanner   It does not stop those centres advertising

What it means in practice is narrower and more manageable than the fear of it. Any copy that could be read as offering to reveal foetal sex, however indirectly, is a criminal exposure with a registration consequence attached — and it is a category of copy that no automated content tool, and no agency working from a generic healthcare template, is checking for.

The related rule most sites miss

Rule 17(1) of the PNDT Rules 1996 requires every genetic counselling centre, genetic laboratory, genetic clinic, ultrasound clinic and imaging centre to display prominently, in English and the local language, a notice stating that disclosure of the sex of the foetus is prohibited under law.

The Rule says “on its premises”. It does not, on its face, require the notice on a website. We recommend publishing the equivalent statement on the site anyway: it is consistent with the purpose of the Act, it reads as clinical seriousness rather than marketing, and it costs nothing. But we will not tell you it is a statutory requirement for a website, because it is not.