Introduction
Toward the end of the 20th and into the 21st century, census data in China revealed a steady increase in birth sex-ratios. The natural sex-ratio at birth of male per female children is approximately 106 males to every 100 females, but the Chinese Association of Social Sciences (CASS) revealed that the sex-ratio for the generation born between 2000 and 2004 was 124 males per 100 females. Similarly, forty-one provinces in India boasted sex-ratios above 125 in 2001, revealing a dramatic increase from 1991 in which only the province Punjab had a sex-ratio of over 120. Polls carried out in South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, Yemen and former Soviet Union states, as well as in the Balkans, likewise yielded increasingly unbalanced sex-ratios.
The shocking statistics have provoked increasing concern in the local governments and within the international medical and academic communities about the decrease of females in Asian countries. The cultural emphasis on having male heirs coupled with advancements in ultrasound and abortion technology appears to have triggered the sex-selection of millions of unborn female children through abortion. The “worldwide war on baby girls,” as designated by The Economist in a recent article, is resulting in an unprecedented deficit of females. The wide-spread extermination of unborn female children and infants in preference for male children has been recognized as gendercide; the intentional, systematic murder of a particular gender according to Mary Anne Warren’s 1985 book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex-Selection. And, the international community is now preparing for the effects of gendercide on the next generation.
Lest sex-selection be considered solely a foreign phenomenon, Andrea Mrozek, writing in the Western Standard in 2006, uncovered that unnatural sex-ratios appear in Canada as well. According to Statistics Canada, the sex-ratio in a number of immigrant communities reflects the unbalanced ratios found in regions of Asia. The existence of sex-selection in Canada raises concerns regarding Canadian abortion practices, the permission of sex-selection in Canada, and Western cultural assumptions that might perpetuate gender biases. Western cultural sensibilities are largely offended by gendercide and sexselection. However, in the absence of Canadian legislation on abortion, it is not legally possible to curtail the decision to abort an unborn child on the basis of gender discrimination.
Technological advances in in vitro fertilization technology now enable parents who possess sufficient funds to use pre-implantation genetic determination (PGD) technology to conceive their preferred gender. While the use of in vitro fertilization to select the sex of a baby is illegal in Canada under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act except in cases where the transmission of a genetic disease is at risk, there is growing evidence that Canadians are taking advantage of “family planning” or “balancing” services in the United States that utilize PGD technology. The family planning industry does not differentiate between families who are selecting the sex of their child because of a bias toward males or a desire for “family balancing,” or having a child of the opposite sex from one’s other children in order to create one’s desired family structure. An examination of sex-selection in Canada reveals that as the cultural emphasis in freedom of choice grows, ethical questions arise concerning the extent of freedom and its potential to also perpetuate cultural prejudices, discrimination, and injustice.