Madrid, Spain, Dec 17, 2007 / 15:29 pm
India and China, the Asian giants with more than one billion inhabitants each, have been forced to prohibit the use of ultrasounds in order to determine the sex of unborn babies in order to prevent the selective abortion of girls, since the number of baby boys far exceeds the number of baby girls being born in the two countries.
An article published by the Spanish daily “El Pais” reports that throughout Asia “there are on average more men than women, especially among the younger generations.” However, “if proportions between the sexes on this continent were the same as in the rest of the world in 2005, there would need to be an additional 163 million women. That is the conclusion of a study by the UN Population Fund presented this week at the Congress on Health and Sexual and Reproductive Rights of Asia and the Pacific in Hyderabad in southern India.”
“This lack of women is especially grave in China, India, South Korea, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, where for every 100 girls there were at least 108 boys in 2005. Other countries such as Nepal and Vietnam are closely following suit,” the newspaper reports.
“In addition men are ‘more profitable’ because they support their parents or carry on the family business. On the other hand, women are seen as a burden. ‘Girls require an investment and they don’t bring any profit later on, because they go to live with the families of their in-laws,” the story noted.
“Although abortion is legal in India,” El Pais reports, “sex selection and the elimination of female fetuses is not. Therefore private clinics and corrupt doctors are making huge profits, somewhere near $172 million.”