"Happy Mothers day" - Gendercide 'alive and well' in Canada?HT: AstuteBloggers. (The Economist).“CREATE the family you want: boy or girl,” ran an advertisement for the Washington Centre for Reproductive Medicine, an American clinic located two hours’ drive south of the Canadian border. Using in vitro fertilisation to select the sex of a child is illegal in Canada, and the ad was soon withdrawn. But for a while it ran in the Indo-Canadian Voice, a newspaper for South Asian migrants.
Sex selection is overwhelmingly associated with China and India. But it may be spreading to rich countries, too. A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) on April 16th looked at 767,000 births in Ontario province from 2002-07 and checked them against the mother’s country of origin. For first-born children, the sex ratio was normal—105 baby boys to 100 baby girls (since boys are slightly more vulnerable to childhood diseases, this ratio provides for equal numbers at marriageable age).
For second children, the ratio was normal for mothers born in Canada.
But mothers born in South Korea bore 120 boys for each 100 girls.
And for Indian, Filipina and other East Asian mothers, the ratio was 110-111 to 100.
The explanation for this pattern in India is that couples welcome a first-born of either sex, but if she is a daughter, then some ensure the second child is a son.
That applies even more to third children: in Ontario, mothers born in India gave birth to 1,883 sons and 1,385 daughters, a hugely distorted ratio of 136 to 100. The study proved controversial. Jonathan Kay, a columnist for the National Post, argued that it should jolt Canada into drafting a new abortion law.Read the full story here.
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