The Asian 'gendercide'

Abortion is being used to conduct a war on baby girls’ states the battle cry from the Campaign Life Coalition, which is planning a massive rally in Ottawa next month to raise awareness about female gendercide in Asian Nations.

The theme of the 2013 National March for Life in Ottawa is a call to end female gendercide, the practice of aborting pre-born girls simply because they are female, reported lifesitenews.com

"In some countries, abortion is being used to conduct a war on baby girls," states Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), the organizer of the National March for Life in Ottawa, scheduled to take place on Thursday, May 9.

The so-called `gendercide` in Asia has resulted in millions of girls not being born, either via selective abortion, in some cases by infanticide, and in others through statistical elimination by families electing to have a second or third child based on the sex of the previous child – some parents will elect not to have another child if they already have a boy, and some who have a girl first choose to try again.

CLC also points out that what was once thought to be a problem only in far away lands have been found to be happening in Canada.

"The Canadian Medical Association revealed that this barbaric practice is happening in Canada, with sex-selective abortion being utilized to target baby girls in the womb. This is the ultimate form of sexist, anti-woman discrimination," CLC says.

In an editorial in the January 16 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, interim editor-in-chief Dr. Rajendra Kale said that while “[s]ome readers might be skeptical about whether female feticide is in fact taking place in Canada and the United States, research in Canada has found the strongest evidence of sex selection at higher parities if previous children were girls among Asians — that is people from India, China, Korea, Vietnam and Philippines.”

Dr. Kale suggested that the solution to the problem is "to postpone the disclosure of medically irrelevant information [such as the sex of the child in the womb] to women until after about 30 weeks of pregnancy."

However, this would not necessarily stop sex-selective abortion of girls, due Canada’s total lack of restrictions on abortion, which means that a woman can legally abort her child right up to the moment of complete birth. It would likely be considerably more difficult to find a willing abortionist that late in pregnancy.

In response to this , British Columbia Tory MP Mark Warawa launched a motion calling on the Parliament of Canada to condemn sex-selective abortion.

Motion 408, which Warawa, reads: “That the House condemn discrimination against females occuring through sex-selective pregnancy termination.”

“Recent studies have shown that the practice of aborting females in favour of males is happening in Canada,” said Warawa. “92% of Canadians believe sex-selective pregnancy termination should be illegal.”

Journalist Mara Hvistendahl after months of research, said she discovered a wide gap in the ratio between boys and girls, not just in China, but in other parts of East and South Asia. In her book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Hvistendahl writes that wider access to ultrasound technology and abortion has allowed parents in these developing countries to abort daughters in the womb and keep sons.

"As a country develops, birth rate falls, new technology comes in, and, unfortunately, one of the side effects is skewed sex ratio at birth," Hvistendahl told Morning Edition host Renee Montagne.

The rise of an educated and wealthy clientele in many Asian countries has made sex-selective abortion more common. But, Hvistendahl says, there are a few key differences between the cultural context of abortion in Asia and the West.

Over the past few decades, 160 million women have vanished from East and South Asia — or, to be more accurate, they were never born at all. Throughout the region, the practice of sex selection — prenatal sex screening followed by selective termination of pregnancies — has yielded a generation packed with boys. From a normal level of 105 boys to 100 girls, the ratio has shifted to 120, 150, and, in some cases, nearly 200 boys born for every 100 girls. In some countries, like South Korea, ratios spiked and are now returning to normal. But sex selection is on the rise in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

But the so called gendercide is not only happening in Asia.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal also warns that Canada has become “a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favor of having sons” due to advanced prenatal testing and easy access to abortion.

The B.C. regulatory body states that testing to identify fetal sex should not be used to accommodate societal preferences that terminating a pregnancy for an undesired sex is repugnant and it is unethical for a doctor to facilitate such a course of action.

However it does happen, said Pardeep Sahota of the Progressive Intercultural Community Services in Vancouver, The Post Group of newspapers reported last year. She told a newspaper that one or two of every 50 clients treated at the women’s health clinic run by Progressive Intercultural Community Services in Vancouver has aborted a female fetus for gender reasons, 

Sahota said many women face tremendous pressure to have sons and don’t understand their rights here. 

“We’ve had clients that have had repeat abortions based on sex selection,” Sahota said. “We’ve had women tell us they’ve sometimes had a doctor encourage them to abort.” 

Canada in 2004 outlawed fertility practices that would increase the likelihood that an embryo will be a certain sex, or that would identify an in-vitro embryo by sex for any reason other than to diagnose a sex-linked disorder or disease.

However, Kale, a Mumbai-born neurologist, believes that several hundred sex-selective abortions take place in Canada each year.

He cites US census data from 2000 that shows male-biased sex ratios among US-born children of Asian parents, and a study of 65 Indian women in the US from 2004-2009 that showed 89 percent of them terminated pregnancies with female fetuses.

Kale said the Canadian medical establishment needs to go further, and make express rulings that would ban fetal sex disclosure before seven months, when it is too late for an abortion.

He added that doctors should nevertheless “avoid painting all Asians with the same broad brush and doing injustice to those who are against sex selection,” but called for collective cooperation by women of all races.

For Dr Kale the problem of female feticide in Canada maybe small, circumscribed and manageable compared to India or China.

But he adds: “If Canada cannot control this repugnant practice, what hope do India and China have of saving millions of women?" 

– Compiled by Mata Press service from news agencies.