Sex Selection Issue Continues To Haunt Indo-Canadian Community With Data Showing High Ratio Of Boys

VANCOUVER – Community and health leaders are calling for an open dialogue about the cultural values that lead to sex selection in light of evidence that suggests some Indo-Canadian parents in BC still continue to choose sons over daughters.

Data from BC’s Provincial Health Officer indicates that sex-selective abortions still occur in the Indo-Canadian community despite the fact that government-funded prenatal sex diagnosis is not available in British Columbia.

In a report released in 2011 titled The Health and Well-Being of Women in British Columbia, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall discovered that children born to first generation Indo-Canadian parents had the highest ratio of boys to girls in 20 of the last 24 years—a number that cannot be attributed to chance alone.

“Typically, the ratio of newborns in our province is 106 boys to every 100 girls, but for Indo-Canadian families, that ratio is much higher at 111 boys to every 100 girls,” says Dr. Meena Dawar, medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health. “Since ratios of boy to girl births are generally consistent over time and population, this...