Beijing to get tough on sex-selective abortions
27 August 2007
China's State Council is planning tougher laws against sex-selective abortions to deal with a gender ratio that is becoming ever more skewed toward males, AFP reported. The regulations being drafted specify punishments for parents and doctors who abort fetuses after discovering they are female. Sex-selective abortions are already illegal in China - where the one-child policy means couples are more likely to abort females - but no particular punishments are tied to such acts. "The root cause is traditional thinking that boys are better than girls, especially in poverty-stricken areas," said Song Jiang, a population expert at Renmin University in Beijing. "Those people expect boys to support the family." According to 2005 figures, there are 119 boys in China to every 100 girls. In some parts of the country, there are said to be three boys for every two girls.