BEIJING, Oct 17 (LSN) – At the 23rd General Population Conference, delegates were told that abortion of girls is rampant in China. Ms. Luo, a delegate to the conference revealed the situation in China saying: “Quite a number of people, even very poor ones, would pay for tests so that they could abort their female offspring if they needed to’‘. Private clinics and laboratories have sprung up everywhere to offer sex detection tests, even though doctors are supposedly forbidden by law from disclosing the sex of children in the womb.
Zhu Chuzhu, a professor at the Center for Women Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University noted that, “Female infanticide is still practised, but it’s not that common…People do not think the act has much to do with the law. Others do not care because usually they regard this as a family matter, a private issue’‘.
Academics at the conference also warned of the dangers of the practice of sex selective abortions. Monica Das Gupta, a Harvard University fellow, released figures which say that “Twenty-three percent of men would not be able to find a wife’’ in the near future. Experts warned the sex imbalance would also lead to rising crime, prostitution and divorce rates.