Disturbing study just released by the Canadian Medical Association Journal: according to an analysis of some 750,000 births in Ontario from 2002 to 2007, women from South Korea and India have proportionally more boys than average Canadian mothers. The ratio of boys to girls, which is naturally of 1.05 (ie 105 males per 100 females), even reach 1.36 in mothers of Indian origin who are in their second birth or more.
Hard to say if we are dealing with selective abortions of girls or boys embryo implantation's (or both, of course), the authors warn. But in all cases, these practices raise ethical issues which it may be extremely difficult to answer. How, with our policy of easy access to abortion - which I find very well as they are, by the way - can we prevent abortions based on sex without falling into an unacceptable racial profiling? And if one assumes that sexual selection is generally a bad thing, do this also includes some gray areas, like those parents who already have two girls and a boy who would like (and vice versa) ?
Hard to say if we are dealing with selective abortions of girls or boys embryo implantation's (or both, of course), the authors warn. But in all cases, these practices raise ethical issues which it may be extremely difficult to answer. How, with our policy of easy access to abortion - which I find very well as they are, by the way - can we prevent abortions based on sex without falling into an unacceptable racial profiling? And if one assumes that sexual selection is generally a bad thing, do this also includes some gray areas, like those parents who already have two girls and a boy who would like (and vice versa) ?
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