Sex-selective abortion
Encyclopedia
Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the baby. The selective abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...

 of female fetuses is most common in areas where cultural norms value male children over female children, especially in parts of People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, and the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

. Sex-selective infanticide is killing a child based on the child's sex, usually shortly after birth (sex selective neonaticide
Neonaticide
Neonaticide is the killing of a newborn infant less than 24 hours old. It can be divided into criminal neonaticide, which is usually by a mother under severe psychological stress, and customary neonaticide, a practice used in certain cultures at certain times to limit the population.Neonaticide is...

). In 1994 over 180 states signed the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development
International Conference on Population and Development
The United Nations coordinated an International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt from 5–13 September 1994. Its resulting Program of Action is the steering document for the United Nations Population Fund ....

, agreeing to "eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child". In 2011 the resolution of PACE
PACE
-Associations:* Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union* National PACE Association* Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence-Educational programs:...

's Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men condemned the practice of prenatal sex selection.

A 2005 study estimated that over 90 million females were "missing" from the expected population in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan alone, and suggested that sex-selective abortion plays a role in this deficit. India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists believe eight million female fetus
Fetus
A fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth.In humans, the fetal stage of prenatal development starts at the beginning of the 11th week in gestational age, which is the 9th week after fertilization.-Etymology and spelling variations:The...

es may have been aborted between 2001 and 2011.
Some research suggests that culture plays a larger role than economic conditions in gender preference and sex-selective abortion, because such deviations in sex ratios do not exist in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Other demographers, however, argue that perceived gender imbalances may arise from the underreporting of female births, rather than sex-selective abortion or infanticide.
Sex-selective abortion was rare before the late 20th century, because of the difficulty of determining the sex of the fetus before birth, but ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...

 has made such selection easier. Prior to this, parents would alter family sex compositions through infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...

.

Practical aspects

Prenatal sex discernment
Prenatal sex discernment
Prenatal sex discernment is the prenatal testing for discerning the sex of a fetus before birth.-Methods:Prenatal sex discernment can be performed by preimplantation genetic diagnosis before conception....

 can be performed by the means of one of the two standard genetic tests, CVS
Chorionic villus sampling
Chorionic villus sampling , sometimes misspelled "chorionic villous sampling", is a form of prenatal diagnosis to determine chromosomal or genetic disorders in the fetus. It entails sampling of the chorionic villus and testing it...

 and amniocentesis
Amniocentesis
Amniocentesis is a medical procedure used in prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities and fetal infections, in which a small amount of amniotic fluid, which contains fetal tissues, is sampled from the amnion or amniotic sac surrounding a developing fetus, and the fetal DNA is examined for...

. These may, in principle, be performed as early as the 8th and the 9th week of pregnancy. The difficulty of these tests and the risk of damage to the fetus, potentially resulting in miscarriage or congenital abnormalities (especially when done early during the pregnancy), make them quite rare during the first trimester. In the United States, CVS and amniocentesis are most commonly performed after the 11th and the 15th week of pregnancy, respectively, and even then procedures are normally only recommended for mothers whose age or family background places them at the elevated risk for genetic disorders (such as Down's syndrome).

Outside the developed world, neither CVS nor amniocentesis account for the bulk of supposed sex-selective abortions, due to their difficulty and high cost. The most common method, instead, is ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...

. Ultrasound is a simple, non-invasive method that involves scanning the abdomen of the pregnant woman with sound waves that create a visual representation of tissues inside her body (including the fetus), and allows the technician who performs it to attempt to locate fetus's genitals - and, therefore, to make a judgment about his or her gender. Unfortunately, ultrasound is nowhere near as accurate as genetic testing: it does not reach near-100% accuracy till as late as the 20th week of pregnancy (however, some novel methods of interpreting ultrasound images exist that allow fairly accurate reading by the 14th week.)

There are also tests which looks for DNA from the fetus in the mother's blood. A meta-analysis published in 2011 found that such tests are reliable more than 98% of the time, as long as they are taken after the seventh week of pregnancy.

Cultural preference

The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common in areas where cultural norms value male children over female children. A son is often preferred as an "asset" since he can earn and support the family; a daughter is a "liability" since she will be married off to another family, and so will not contribute financially to her parents. The patriarchal structure of a society is the single most important factor skewing the sex ratio in favor of males, accentuated in some cultures by the burden of raising a dowry
Dowry
A dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage. It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both...

 for a daughter's marriage. Openness to the very concept of sex selection is a significant factor: among societies which practice selective female abortion nowadays, many were systematically practicing female infanticide (either directly or by withholding postnatal care from children of undesirable sex) long before abortion became a viable option.

In modern East Asia, a large part of the pattern of preferences leading to this practice can be condensed simply as a desire to have a male heir. Monica Das Gupta (2005) observes that, in late 1980s to early 1990s China, there was no evidence of selective abortion of female fetuses among firstborn children, or in families with one or more existing sons (in fact, families with multiple sons were, if anything, more likely to abort a boy than a girl). But, at the same time, families with existing daughters appeared very likely to abort any further female fetuses, resulting in heavily skewed sex ratios.

Genetic

Gender-linked genetic abnormalities, such as several forms of colorblindness, are linked to recessive genes on the X chromosome. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis can identify some life-threatening genetic abnormalities in embryo. The easiest way to select against embryos which may have a gender-linked genetic abnormality is to choose only female embryos. Embryos which are not implanted are usually discarded.

Geography

Sex-selective abortion is thought to be most common in South and East Asia, including parts of People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

.

It is possible that sex-selective abortions have caused an increase in the imbalances between sex ratios of various Asian countries. Studies have estimated that, by 1995, prenatal sex selection has increased the ratio of males to females from the natural average of 105-106 males per 100 females to 113 males per 100 females in both South Korea and China, 110 males per 100 females in Taiwan and 107 males per 100 females among Chinese populations living in Singapore and parts of Malaysia. However, a similar trend does not exist in North Korea, possibly due to limited access to prenatal sex-testing technologies. The worst ratio on record is thought to be in the city of Lianyungang
Lianyungang
Lianyungang is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China. It borders Yancheng to its southeast, Huai'an and Suqian to its south, Xuzhou to its southwest, and the province of Shandong to its north...

, China, at 163 boys per 100 girls under the age of 5.

Sex-selective abortion has been seen as worsening the sex ratio in India, affecting gender issues related to sex compositions of Indian households. According to the decennial Indian census, the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group in India went from 104.0 males per 100 females in 1981, to 105.8 in 1991, to 107.8 in 2001, to 109.4 in 2011. The ratio is significantly higher in certain states
States and territories of India
India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...

 such as Punjab
Punjab (India)
Punjab ) is a state in the northwest of the Republic of India, forming part of the larger Punjab region. The state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the east, Haryana to the south and southeast and Rajasthan to the southwest as well as the Pakistani province of Punjab to the...

 and Haryana
Haryana
Haryana is a state in India. Historically, it has been a part of the Kuru region in North India. The name Haryana is found mentioned in the 12th century AD by the apabhramsha writer Vibudh Shridhar . It is bordered by Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to the north, and by Rajasthan to the west and south...

 (126.1 and 122.0, as of 2001). The use of ultrasound and abortion for sex selection has been banned since 1994 in India and 1995 in China, however, there is evidence that such bans are rarely enforced, and numerous dedicated sex selection clinics operate in many regions of those countries. The practice is most common among educated and wealthy residents, who are most likely to afford the procedure. An article published in The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...

 analyzed Indian census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

 data and concluded that selective abortion of female fetuses has increased in India over the past few decades due to increased prenatal sex determination and has contributed to a widening imbalance in the child sex ratio, though the basis of the finding has been questioned.

Abnormal sex ratios at birth, possibly explained by growing incidence of sex-selective abortion, have also been noted in some other countries outside South and East Asia. According to the 2011 CIA World Factbook
The World Factbook
The World Factbook is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official paper copy version is available from the National Technical Information Service and the Government Printing Office...

, countries with more than 110 males per 100 females at birth also include Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

 and former Soviet republics of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

, and Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...

.

Sex-selection practices also occur among some South Asian immigrants in the United States: A study of the 2000 United States Census observed definite male bias in families of Chinese, Korean and Indian immigrants, which was getting increasingly stronger in families where first one or two children were female. In those families where the first two children were girls, the sex ratio of the third child was observed to be 1.51:1 in favor of boys.

Societal effects

Gender bias can broadly impact a society, and it is estimated that by 2020 there could be more than 35 million young "surplus males" in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and 25 million in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Census information shows the problem is worsening. In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 overall, by 2011, there were little more than 9 girls younger than 6 years old for every 10 boys. In India, the 2011 census showed that the ratio of girls to boys under the age of 6 years old has dropped even during the past decade, from 927 girls for every 1000 boys in 2001 to 918 girls for every 1000 boys in 2011. Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

 state's ratio is 883 girls, and Satara
Satara
Satara is a city located in the Satara District of Maharashtra state of India. The town is 2320 ft. above sea-level, near the confluence of the Krishna and its tributary river Venna. The city was the capital of the Maratha empire in the 17th century, hence one of the the historical cities of...

 is even lower at 881. In India, hospitals are banned from giving out the gender of an unborn fetus to prevent sex-selection abortions, although evidence indicates that the information is often revealed.

Evidence exists for a link between sex ratios and violence. In a society with an artificial shortage of women, a combination of surplus of males and increased upward mobility of females results in accumulation of unmarried, lower-class males, who tend to be violence-prone. In the recent decades both in China and in India, regions with highest sex-selection rates experienced crime waves. In China, due to its long history of son preference, there is even a term for such males, guang gun-er ("bare branches"). It has been argued that most bandits in historical China were bare branches, and that their prevalence was a major factor behind the massive Nien Rebellion
Nien Rebellion
The Nien Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in northern China from 1851 to 1868, contemporaneously with Taiping Rebellion in South China...

 in the mid-19'th century.

Shortage of females has the effect of driving human trafficking and mail-order bride phenomena. There are reports of women from Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

, and North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

 systematically trafficked to mainland China and Taiwan and sold into forced marriages. In South Korea and Taiwan, high male sex ratios and declining birth rates several decades ago have led to over 10% of marriages in those countries being between local men and foreign women, often from countries such as mainland China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

During the 1994 United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 International Conference on Population and Development
International Conference on Population and Development
The United Nations coordinated an International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt from 5–13 September 1994. Its resulting Program of Action is the steering document for the United Nations Population Fund ....

 in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, policy objectives intended to eliminate sex-selective abortion and infanticide, along with discrimination against female children, were stated in Article 4.15 of the Programme of Action: "...to eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child and the root causes of son preference, which results in harmful and unethical practices regarding female infanticide and prenatal sex selection".

It has been argued that by having a one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...

, China has increased the rate of abortion of female fetuses, thereby accelerating a demographic decline. As most Chinese families are given incentives to have only one child, and would often prefer at least one son. Researchers have expressed concern that prenatal sex selection may reduce the number of families in the next generation.

Since 2005, test kits such as the Baby Gender Mentor
Baby Gender Mentor
Baby Gender Mentor is the trade name of a controversial blood test designed for prenatal sex discernment, that is, to determine whether a pregnant woman is carrying a male or female child. The test is made by Acu-Gen Biolab, Inc., a biotech company in Lowell, Massachusetts, United States, and is...

 have become available for purchase over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. These tests have been criticized for making it easier to perform a sex-selective abortion earlier in a pregnancy. Concerns have also been raised about their accuracy.

In popular culture

The Manish Jha film, Matrubhoomi-A Nation Without Women (2003), depicts a future
Future
The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come...

 dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

 in a village in India, populated exclusively by males due to female infanticide, and which is reduced to barbarianism.

See also

  • Abortion debate
    Abortion debate
    The abortion debate refers to discussion and controversy surrounding the moral and legal status of abortion. The two main groups involved in the abortion debate are the self-described "pro-choice" movement and the "pro-life" movement...

  • Child abandonment
    Child abandonment
    Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...

  • Fetal rights
    Fetal rights
    Fetal rights is a term used in some countries in reference to legislation that grants legal rights to fetuses. The term is used most often in the context of the abortion debate, as the basis for an argument in support of the pro-life stance....

  • Feticide
    Feticide
    Feticide is an act that causes the death of a fetus. In a legal context, "fetal homicide" or "child destruction" refers to the deliberate or incidental killing of a fetus due to a criminal human act, such as a blow to the abdomen of a pregnant woman...

  • Gendercide
    Gendercide
    Gendercide is a neologism that refers to the systematic killing of members of a specific sex.-Gendercide:Gendercide is gender-selective mass killing. The term was first used by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection...

  • Missing women of Asia
    Missing women of Asia
    The phenomenon of the missing women of Asia is a shortfall in the number of women in Asia relative to the number that would be expected if there was no sex-selective abortion or female infanticide or if the newborn of both sexes received similar levels of health care and nutrition.The phenomenon...

  • Gender role
    Gender role
    Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...

  • Genetics and abortion
    Genetics and abortion
    The genetics and abortion issue is an extension of the abortion debate and the disability rights movement. Since the advent of forms of prenatal diagnosis, such as amniocentesis and ultrasound, it is has become possible to detect the presence of congenital disorders in the fetus before birth,...

  • Psychohistorical views on infanticide
  • Selective reduction
    Selective reduction
    Selective reduction is the practice of aborting one or more fetuses in a multifetal pregnancy. Such an abortion procedure is often performed after a congenital defect has been identified...

  • Sex selection
    Sex selection
    Sex selection is the attempt to control the sex of the offspring to achieve a desired sex. It can be accomplished in several ways, both pre- and post-implantation of an embryo, as well as at birth...


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