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| Sunday, 18 July 2004 |
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China bans selective abortion to fix gender imbalance BEIJING, (AFP) China said Thursday it will strictly ban selective abortion of female foetuses in an attempt to reverse a disastrous imbalance in the ratio of newborn boys to girls. In China 119 boys are born for every 100 girls, according to the latest statistics, the official Xinhua news agency said. A normal newborn sex ratio is 103-107 boys for 100 girls. Senior family planning official Zhao Baige said the government plans to reverse the imbalance by 2010 by banning sex-selective abortion and launching campaigns to end the tradition of valuing boys more than girls. "Any individual or medical organisation offering illegal sex-selective abortion services will take legal responsibility," Zhao was quoted by Xinhua as saying. Zhao blamed the imbalance on the traditional preference for boys, which remains strong in the countryside despite campaigns emphasising sex equality, and a poor rural social security system which forces people to become dependent on their children in old age. President Hu Jintao earlier this year said that bringing China's newborn sex ratio back to a normal level had become one of the country's important goals in the coming 10 years, Xinhua said. The arrival of new technologies, especially ultrasound scanning, has made it possible for Chinese couples to know the sex of their unborn baby and, in many cases, have an abortion if it was a girl. Strict population policies have made matters worse, as couples are usually allowed to have only one child, or two at the most in rural areas. Only seven provinces and regions have a normal newborn sex ratio, namely Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Guizhou, Tibet, Ningxia, Qinghai and Xinjiang, which are mostly home to ethnic minorities exempt from the one-child policy. The other 24 provinces, regions and municipalities all have a sex ratio of more than 110 boys to 100 girls, Xinhua said. The gender imbalance has led to warnings that millions of Chinese men will be unable to find partners in coming decades and led to a major problem with trafficking in women and children. In the three years from 2001, Chinese police freed 42,215 victims of trafficking in women and children, the state press said in March this year. Over the same period, more than 22,000 suspects were arrested as police cracked 20,360 cases involving kidnapped women and children, many whom were forced into marriages or sexual slavery. |
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