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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Asian sex test echo in Canada
-The Telegraph

The Canadian Medical Association Journal has sought a ban on the disclosure of foetal sex until after 30 weeks of pregnancy amid concerns that sections of Asian immigrants, including Indians, in Canada selectively abort female foetuses.

The journal said the sex of a foetus need not be revealed to any woman before 30 weeks because such information was medically irrelevant and could, in some instances, facilitate female foeticide.

Postponing the disclosure of sex until after 30 weeks would be a “small price to pay to save thousands of girls in Canada”, the journal said in an editorial published today.

It was authored by Rajendra Kale, an India-trained neurologist and the journal’s interim editor-in-chief.

Such a ban would require the understanding and willingness of women of all ethnicities to make a “temporary compromise”, the journal said.

The journal has cited a study in Canada which indicates that, among immigrant couples from India, China, Korea, Philippines and Vietnam, there are some with two daughters who selectively get rid of female foetuses to ensure their third-born child is a son.

The study published last year by economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund at Columbia University in the US and Kevin Milligan at the University of British Columbia in Canada has documented evidence for a “clear son preference” among Southeast Asian immigrants in Canada.

Their study found high male-to-female sex ratios entirely driven by immigrants who are neither Christian nor Muslim, the highest ratios being observed for Sikhs. Among Sikhs, there are more than two boys per girl for the third child if the two elder children were girls, implying a sex ratio that is 100 per cent above normal for this group.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal said that while female foeticide in Canada may be localised in some minority ethnic groups, “small numbers cannot be ignored when the issue is about discrimination against women in its most extreme form”.

Kale has proposed in the editorial that doctors should be allowed to disclose information about the sex of a foetus only after 30 weeks of pregnancy when an unquestioned abortion will be “all but impossible”.

India’s 2011 census had revealed the lowest female-to-male sex ratio of children up to six years since 1961 — 914 girls for every 1,000 boys — reflecting the country’s failure to change preferences for male babies and curb selective abortion of female foetuses.

Compared to the situation in India or China, the problem of female foeticide in Canada is “small, circumscribed, and manageable”, the journal said. “If Canada cannot control this repugnant practice, what hope do India and China have of saving millions of women?”

The journal has also cited another small and qualitative study published last year that suggests that female foeticide is also practised by Indians in the US. The study questioned 65 immigrant Indian women, among whom 40 per cent had terminated pregnancies with female foetuses and 89 per cent of the women carrying female foetuses in their current pregnancy had pursued an abortion.