Sex Selection: New Technologies, New Forms of Gender Discrimination

With the advent of reproductive technologies that made it possible to detect the sex of a fetus developing in a woman's womb came a new method of discrimination against girls and women. Developed in the 1970s, prenatal diagnostic technologies like ultrasound scanning and amniocentesis proved profitable when marketed as a method of sex selection. Using prenatal diagnosis to detect sex, a person could choose not to have a child based on the sex of the fetus and opt for an abortion.(1) Availability of these technologies and their promotion as tools for sex selection spread fast, primarily in South and East Asia. Currently, they are the most commonly practiced method of sex selection around the world.

Where its use is most widespread, prenatal diagnosis for sex selection reveals clear discrimination against the girl child, leading to severe gender imbalances in the population. In India, for example, the 2001 census recorded a substantial decline in the child sex ratio from 945 to 927 females per 1000 males in just ten years. In urban areas the ratio declined even more dramatically...