East Meets West: Gendercide is Not Only an Eastern Culture Problem

What is Female Feticide or Gendercide?

Gendercide (also known as female feticide or son-biased sex selection) is the elimination of girl babies through abortion, sex-selection before implantation, neglect or murder.

It is commonly practiced in countries like China, India, and Korea based on a long-held belief in the value of a son versus the burden girls place on their families.

In China, the practice is blamed on the 1979 law that prohibits families from having more than one child.

In India, even though it is illegal, the practice of dowries makes girl babies a burden to their families. Dowries are paid (land and/or money) by the bride’s parents to the groom’s parents. Traditionally, a family with a good dowry for their daughter would fetch a better husband.

Ultrasound is being used to determine the sex of the baby before birth and women either deciding on their own or at the behest of their families and husbands to abort girl babies.

“According to the United Nations, as many as 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India, and untold numbers of baby girls are abandoned or killed.” (2)

Watch this several-segmented story of an Indian pediatrician who was pregnant with girl twins here.

And you can read about China’s situation, here.

East Meets West

So this is something that only happens “over there”, right? Wrong.

Families who immigrate to North America and Europe often bring these cultural practices with them, and may continue to practice them here.

Interim Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Rajendra Kale, in his editorial published January 16, 2012, cited a small qualitative U.S. study that involved 65 immigrant Indian women.

“Of these women, 40% had terminated pregnancies with female fetuses and 89% of the women carrying female fetuses in their current pregnancy pursued an abortion.” (5, 9)

A St. Mike’s Hospital (Toronto) study released April 16, 2012, analyzed over 750,000 births in Ontario (Canada) “and found mothers born in South Korea and India were ‘significantly’ more likely to have boys for their second child. When it came to having a third child, the male-to-female ratio grew even more skewed for Indian-born mothers, who had 136 boys for every 100 girls. By comparison, the ratio for Canadian-born mothers was 105 boys for every 100 girls – regardless of whether it was their first, second or third-born.” (8, 9)

These population trends are beginning to emerge in both Canadian and American census records among certain ethnic communities. (4, 6, 8) Although no definitive conclusions can be drawn about the reason for the increase in boy babies in these communities, it is generally accepted that it isn’t because of the natural order of things.

Efforts to Combat Long-Held Cultural Sex-Selection Practices

The concern about this sex-selection practice happening in western societies has resulted in some hospitals instituting new policies about telling parents the sex of their baby, and where there isn’t an official policy, some sonographers decline to tell parents of their own accord. (10, 11)

It is actually illegal in India for an ultrasound to be done with the expressed purpose of finding out the gender of the baby. (1)

Unfortunately, ultrasounds aren’t the only way to determine the sex of a baby. Now parents can find out their baby’s gender with a mail-in blood test kit that is available to order online (7), leaving the window open for son-biased sex-selection practice to continue. The manufacturer, Consumer Genetics Inc., asserts that it won’t test blood samples unless women sign a consent form agreeing not to use the results for gender selection and abortion. (7)

In 2004, Canada passed the Canadian Assisted Human Reproduction Act of 2004 which “prohibits any action that would ensure or increase the probability that an embryo will be of a particular sex or identifies the sex of an in-vitro embryo, except to prevent, diagnose or treat a sex-linked disorder or disease – thus closing this avenue for sex selection.” (6)

A similar law, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2012, sponsored by Rep. Trent Frank, R-Ariz., was not passed as it would encourage doctors to racially profile women and would make it difficult for any woman to have an abortion. (14)

Unfortunately, the fact that laws such as these are being considered means that the practice of gender motivated abortions could and does exist. The question is, what is the best way to make it stop?

Sources:

1. VIDEO: India’s Deadly Secret. ABCNews.com. Web. Mar 11, 2013.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/canadian-woman-fights-save-indias-disappearing-daughters/story?id=16133385

2. Canadian, American Fight to Save India’s Disappearing Daughters. Lovett, Edward. ABCNews. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/canadian-woman-fights-save-indias-disappearing-daughters/story?id=16133385

3. Selective abortions prompt call for ultrasound rules. CBCNews Health. Web. Mar 11, 2013.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/01/13/female-feticide-editorial.html

4. Son-biased sex ratios in the 2000 United States Census. Almond, Douglas & Edlund, Lena. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Web. Mar 11, 2013.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/15/5681.full

5. “It’s a girl!” – could be a death sentence. Kale, Rajendra. Canadian Medical Association Journal. CMAJ 2012. DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.120021. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2012/01/16/cmaj.120021

6. O Sister, Where Art Thou? The Role of Son Preference and Sex Choice: Evidence from Immigrants to Canada. Almond, Douglas, Edlund, Lena & Milligan, Kevin. National Bureau of Economic Research. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15391

7. Boy or girl? Sex test deemed accurate. The Associated Press. CBC New Health. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/08/10/sex-detection-blood-test.html

8. Female feticide: is it happening in Ontario? Yang, Jennifer. TorontoStar. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/04/16/female_feticide_is_it_happening_in_ontario.html

9. Sex ratios among Canadian liveborn infants of mothers from different countries. Ray, Joel G., Henry, David A., and Urquia, Marcelo L. Canadian Medical Association Journal. CMAJ 2012. DOI:10.1503/cmaj.120165. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/9/E492.full.pdf+html?sid=5ce6c03e-c5df-4bb9-ad4b-8acfc60f5b2c

10. Divulging baby’s gender during ultrasound varies across GTA hospitals. Yang, Jennifer. Toronto Star. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/04/17/divulging_babys_gender_during_ultrasound_varies_across_gta_hospitals.html

11. Can I find out the sex of my baby? National Health Service. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1642.aspx?CategoryID=54&SubCategoryID=128

12. Lawmakers, Activists Target ‘Gendercide’ Sex Selection. Moran, Terry. ABCNews. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/lawmakers-activists-target-gendercide-sex-selection

13. Gendercide: China’s shameful massacre of unborn girls means there will soon be 30m more men than women. Hitches, Peter. Daily Mail. Web. Mar 12, 2013.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265068/China-The-worlds-new-superpower-beginning-century-supremacy-alarming-surplus-males.html

14. House GOP’s ‘Prenatal Nondiscrimination’ Bill Fails. Sheppard, Kate. MotherJones. Web. Mar 13, 2013.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/house-gop-abortion-sex-selection

Reviewed March 14, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith

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