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Estimates that thousands of female fetuses are aborted each year in Taiwan have led to calls for health agencies to better regulate measures aimed at closing the nation’s gender gap, which is among the most skewed in the world.

Providing better subsidies, education and care for pregnant women should also be a priority, lawmakers from both parties said yesterday, with the newest government statistics showing that 1.09 males were born for every one female last year.

In most countries, a male--female ratio of 1.06 to one at birth would be the norm. The disparity led Bureau of Health Promotion -Director--General Chiou Shu-ti to suggest on Saturday that more than 3,000 female fetuses were selectively aborted last year alone.

“The gender imbalance is deeply troubling for Taiwanese society,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng said, adding that Taiwan only needed to look at China to see the effect of long-term imbalances. “The government needs to come up with a new policy to deal with the issue.”

KMT Legislator Pan Wei-kang, who heads the Modern Women’s Foundation, said the problem was...