Toronto Sun: A new study of Ontario births shows women born in India are more likely to have a boy as their third child, lending credibility to the theory that sex-selection abortion is common among immigrant communities. The Canadian Medical Association study found that the third-child births of Indian-born women were at a ratio of 136 boys to 100 girls, compared to 105 boys to 100 girls for Canadian-born women, which is close to the worldwide average.
The theory is that in cultures in which boys are preferred, parents who already have girls will abort subsequent female babies until they can conceive a son. The authors point to previous research that shows a sharp increase in the male-to-female ratio among second children in India when the first is a girl, but no similar spike for girls when the first born is a boy.
The study comes on the heels of a controversial Canadian Medical Association Journal editorial calling on doctors to hide a fetus' sex from parents for the first 30 weeks of pregnancy, after which abortion becomes very difficult to access in Canada. "Canada has a unique opportunity to address this problem. It's a major form of discrimination against women. If Canada cannot do something to address this problem, what hope do India and China have?" said Dr. Rajendra Kale.
The suggestion sparked a vocal backlash from abortion rights activists and gynaecologists. "People have the right to knowledge and they should be treated like responsible adults, and can decide for themselves what to do with information like that," Joyce Arthur, executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada said at the time. "We're pro-choice not because we love abortion, but because women have the right to decide what's best for their own lives for their own reasons, and we don't have to agree with those reasons." She acknowledged that "nobody likes sex-selective abortion," but said that's not a good enough reason to ban it, instead suggesting education and outreach.
No comments:
Post a Comment