The practice of selectively aborting girls is spreading from India and China to Canada as immigrant communities take root there. Normally the ratio of boy to girl births is 105 to 100. But according to an expos?n the magazine Western Standard, in several suburbs around Vancouver and Toronto, the ratio has risen to as high as 116 to 100 in recent years. "Since the communities… have seen hundreds of thousands of live births in the last decade, the number of missing daughters may be somewhere in the thousands," writes Andrea Mrozek.

Statisticians warn that the numbers are too limited to reach firm conclusions about the practice. Other factors may be contributing to the increasing skewed ratios. However, because abortion is such a politically sensitive issue, it is difficult to get access to the government statistics to establish exactly how widespread the practice is.

The magazine also claims that some hospitals do sex selective abortions. A leaked internal document from Women’s Hospital in Vancouver, for instance, claims that "not allowing sex selection causes increased harm to women who must endure repeated pregnancies in efforts to have a son" and advises health care workers to accommodate their requests.

Public opinion in Canada opposes aborting children simply because of their gender. Sex-selecting IVF embryos was banned in 2004. But catching doctors who abort girls on request is all but impossible and apparently it is not illegal.

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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