The Chinese government has announced it will act to eliminate sex-selection abortion and end the imbalance between male and female babies.
China Daily reported Jan. 7 the world's most populous country, which reached 1.3 billion in population the day before, has established the year 2010 as a target for reversing an imbalance that has resulted in 119 boys being born for every 100 girls.
“The government takes it as an urgent task to correct the gender imbalance of newborns,” said Zhang Weiqing, minister over the National Population and Family Planning Commission, according to the official Xinhua news agency, China Daily reported. “As a new measure, the commission will start drafting revisions to the criminal law in order to effectively ban fetus gender detection and selective abortion other than legitimate medical purposes.”
Sex-selection abortion is prohibited in the communist country, but that has not prevented ultrasound technology from being used to detect female babies and abort them. The Chinese typically favor sons, since they are able to support their parents, especially in their old age, and to continue the family name, according to China Daily.
China has maintained a one-child, population control policy for more than two decades. The policy limits couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. Other exceptions have been made in some provinces.
Baptist Press