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Swedish health authorities have ruled that gender-based abortion is not illegal according to current law and can not therefore be stopped, according to a report by Sveriges Television. Swedish surgeon forgets swabs in sewn up mum (10 May 09) Swedish gays made to wait for church wedding (3 May 09) May Day nuptials for same-sex couples (2 May 09) The Local reported in February that a woman from Eskilstuna in southern Sweden had twice had abortions after finding out the gender of the child. The woman, who already had two daughters, requested an amniocentesis in order to allay concerns about...

The preference for sons in traditional Chinese families has led to a vast gender disparity in China: A study has found that there are currently 32 million more boys than girls under the age of 20. While Chinese officials have acknowledged that the country’s “one-child” policy has led to a gender imbalance, the new study offers the first hard data on the extent of the disparity. The study included nearly five million people under the age of 20 and covered every county in China. It found that overall ratios of boys were high everywhere, but were most striking among...

The most recent U.S. census reveals that abortion clinics are engaged in an insidious form of racial and sex-based discrimination. In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Columbia University economic researchers Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund said they found a significant gender imbalance between males and females within immigrant populations in the United States, which they think provides "evidence of sex-selection, most likely at the prenatal stage." The data revealed unnatural sex-ratio imbalances within segments of certain immigrant populations, including those originating from India, Vietnam, Thailand, Armenia and especially China, where government-enforced "one child"...

Selective abortion in favour of males has left China with 32 million more boys than girls, creating an imbalance that will endure for decades, an investigation released on Friday warned. The probe provides ammunition for those experts who predict China’s obsession with a male heir will sow a bitter fruit as men facing a life of bachelorhood fight for a bride. “Although some imaginative and extreme solutions have been suggested, nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men,” says the paper, published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). In most countries, males slightly outnumber...

Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona has introduced the "Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act." If passed, the bill would ban race- or gender-selection abortions. Attorney Steven Aden of the Alliance Defense Fund tells OneNewsNow his organization helped write the bill that is being referred to as "PreNDA." "Sex-selection and racially-motivated abortion is an immense problem in America and internationally," the attorney explains, "and Congressman Franks' bill would prohibit the performance of such abortions, the funding of them, or promoting them." One of the reasons for an increase in such abortions in America is related to immigration, says Aden. "The problem of sex-selection abortion...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life group that monitors international issues says the problem of sex-selection abortions could be lessened if pro-abortion activists got involved. But the Population Research Institute says the blather of protecting women and their health appears to stop at the border's edge.In a new YouTube video the group has released, PRI president Steven Mosher decries the practice, common in East and South Asian countries, of sex-selective abortion."In China, India, and other Asian countries, there is a strong preference for boys," Mosher told LifeNews.com. "This combination of a preference for boys and modern technology--the ultrasound...

A new report by the British charity ActionAid indicates that unborn baby girls are being disproportionately aborted in some areas of India, while significant numbers who live until birth are being deliberately neglected and left to die. In one area in the state of Punjab, there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys among high cast families, the report claims. ActionAid joined Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC) to produce the Disappearing Daughters report, the BBC says. After interviewing more than 6,000 households in sites across five states in northwestern India, researchers found that the proportion of girls to...

In India baby girls are being disproportionately aborted or neglected and left to die. In one area in the state of Punjab, there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys among high cast families, the report claims. The vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) reacts to the situation by discussing about what the Church is doing and about his hopes for the future Findings from areas across five states in north and north-west India reveal that the asymmetrical sex ratio between girls and boys has not only worsened but is accelerating compared to the last...

Last week, a Morning Call article reported on the practice of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) as a high-tech means of family planning. This laboratory technique, when used as a means of gender selection, allows parents-to-be to stack the chromosomal deck of their offspring in their favor. Though still too complex and costly for widespread use, this procedure nevertheless has a tantalizing appeal. Now, family balance can be planned and executed with greater scientific certainty. Dr. Bruce Rose, the endocrinologist who directs Infertility Solutions in Salisbury Township, put the promise of this procedure into words that lay bare the popular perspective:...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Increasing female feticide in India could spark a demographic crisis where fewer women in society will result in a rise in sexual violence and child abuse as well as wife-sharing, the United Nations warned. Despite laws banning tests to determine the sex of an unborn child, the killing of female fetuses is common in some regions of India where a preference for sons runs deep. As a result, the United Nations says an estimated 2,000 unborn girls are illegally aborted every day in India. This has led to skewed sex ratios in regions like Punjab, Haryana,...

China: Projected Number of Men without Wives Massively Increased By 2020, 37 million Chinese men would be unable to find wives if trends continue By Elizabeth O'Brien BEIJING, China, August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Recent demographic reports are showing that the ratio of males to females in China is spiraling out of control. If the increasing imbalance, caused primarily by sex-selected abortions and infanticide, is not remedied, it will lead to increased crimes against women and the threat of an aggressively militant state. In January Chinese media reports said that by 2020, 30 million Chinese men would be unable to...

Hundreds of Women March to Protest Illegal Female Abortion in India By Elizabeth O'BrienBHUBANESWAR, India, August 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Hundreds of women marched through the Eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar on Wednesday during a massive rally to protest abortion and infanticide of females based on sex-selection, Reuters reports. The streets were thronged with protestors carrying signs, saying, "hang the murderers" and "spare the girls." Earlier in the day, young activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student political group, collected hundreds of signatures as part of a protest campaign against the sex-based murder of baby girls, Salem...

Ultrasounds Used for Sex-Selected Abortion in Ethnic Canadian Communities By Elizabeth O'BrienSURREY, BC, August 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Evidence suggests that ultrasound ads may be targeting Indo-Canadian groups to determine the sex of their unborn babies, which in turn may lead to abortions based on sex-selection, as is happening in numerous countries throughout the world. Two Punjabi-language newspapers, the Mississauga-based Ajit Weekly and the Hamdard Weekly, published in Toronto, New York, Vancouver, California and India, have published adds for ultrasound clinics, the CBC reports. These papers, which are distributed throughout Canada, encouraged couples to discover the sex of their unborn...

New Delhi, India (LifeNews.com) -- Hundreds of women in India took to the streets on Wednesday to march in protest against sex-selection abortions and female infanticides that are ravaging the population of girls there. Despite both governmental and private efforts, the deaths of girl babies is causing a problematic gender imbalance. The women marched through the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar to protest the growing number of cases of abortions and infanticides there. The carried banners reading "hang the murderers" and "spare the girls" and called on the government to do more to crack down on illegal clinics that do...

The wife of a millionaire industrialist has shocked Indian high society by accusing her husband of forcing her to abort two baby girls after taking illegal tests to determine their gender. Pooja Salotia even accused her husband, Chirag, of trying to force her to have sex with his two brothers to conceive a male heir for the family machinery business in the state of Gujarat. Police arrested her husband, his two brothers and seven other relatives after Mrs Salotia, 32, filed an official complaint in the city of Ahmedabad on Saturday. Her allegations against 18 people have sent shockwaves across...

BANGALORE, July 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Unwanted girl babies in India are killed after birth by a variety of methods including being smothered with a pillow or cloth, drowned in milk, fed poisoned seeds or burned alive in sealed mud pots; but according to a recently published book, the most popular form of femicide is now abortion, with the assistance of ultrasound to determine the child's sex. "Disappearing Daughters", a new book by an Indian woman journalist, Gita Aravamudhan, published by Penguin Books, calls "female foeticide" "an organized crime." "The ultrasound machine has mutated into an instrument of murder," she...

NAYAGARH, India, July 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The BBC reports that police have found 30 bags full of baby body parts outside an abortion facility in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. Local forensic experts suggest the remains are the product of illegal sex-selective abortions.The owners of the abortion facility have been taken into custody. Police have said there is no way of knowing how many bodies were found in the bags recovered from a waste dump near the town of Nayagarh.Abortion, sonograms and the traditional cultural preference for boys have combined to cause a lopsided sex demographic in...

TORONTO (CP) - Mail-order blood-testing kits that can determine the sex of a fetus early in pregnancy may be used for more than getting a jumpstart on deciding whether to paint the nursery pink or blue, says a doctors group. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada says the results of the early tests could be used by parents to decide whether to continue the pregnancy or abort the fetus solely based on its gender. Using the kits to choose a baby's sex through selective abortion is a practice the SOGC "is firmly against," said president Dr. Donald Davis,...

There is a little-known battle for survival going in some parts of the world. Those at risk are baby girls, and the casualties are in the millions each year. The weapons being used against them are prenatal sex selection, abortion and female infanticide — the systematic killing of girls soon after they are born. According to the ’s (UNFPA) 2005 State of the World Population Report, these practices, combined with neglect, have resulted in at least 60 million "missing" girls in Asia, creating gender imbalances and other serious problems that experts say will have far reaching consequences for years...

New Delhi, India (LifeNews.com) -- The government is India is unveiling yet another proposal to try to stem the tide of sex-selection abortions and female infanticides there. The Asian nation, where cultural values place more emphasis on boys, has had a hard time stopping the practices and the skewed male-female gender ratios they produce. Legislators announced the new effort in the Lok Sabha, the lower chamber of the Indian Parliament. It would involve giving state-funded insurance coverage for female children, including medial help and education assistance.Minister of state for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told AsiaNews, “The proposal is...