Selective Abortion on the Rise among Indians in North America

Bangalore: The female foeticide seems to have crossed national borders and has travelled with some Indian parents.  It does not prevail just in India anymore and it’s not just about boy versus girl economics. A recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) sparked off a debate about the prevalence of this practice among Indians in North America, where female foeticide was seen by way of selective abortion in Canada’s Asian immigrant communities.

The journal’s editor-in-chief (interim), Rajendra Kale cited studies to show that female foeticide in Canada and the U.S. occurs in large numbers to distort male-female ratios in some immigrant groups, especially ethnic Indians and Chinese.

Kale suggested that “health care professionals should not reveal the sex of the foetus to any woman before, say, 30 weeks of pregnancy because such information is medically irrelevant and in some instances harmful”. He pointed out that after about 30 weeks, an unquestioned abortion would be “all but impossible.”

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia stated that tests to identify sex during pregnancy should not be used to accommodate societal preferences and that the termination of a pregnancy for an undesired sex is repulsive and it is unethical for physicians to facilitate such action.