Sex-selective abortion
pregnancy termination based on predicted sex
Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the infant. As the practice overwhelmingly targets female fetuses, sex-selective abortion often specifically refers to female-selective abortion. Sex-selective abortion is closely linked to female infanticide, and is recognized by many human rights organizations as an act of violence against women.
The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common where male children are valued over female children, especially in parts of East Asia and South Asia (particularly in countries such as People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan), as well as in the Caucasus, Western Balkans, and to a lesser extent North America. Based on India's third National Family and Health Survey, results showed that if both partners, mother and father, or just the father, preferred male children, sex-selective abortion was more common. In cases where only the mother prefers sons, this is likely to result in sex-selective neglect in which the child is not likely to survive past infancy.
Sex-selective abortion was first documented in 1975, and became commonplace by the late 1980s in South Korea, Taiwan and China and around the same time or slightly later in India.
Sex-selective abortion affects the human sex ratio—the relative number of males to females in a given age group. This contributes to a shortfall of women, as observed in particular in China and India, the two most populous countries of the world.
Studies and reports on sex-selective abortion often assume that birth-sex ratio—the overall ratio of boys and girls at birth—for a regional population is an indicator of sex-selective abortion.
The public source identifies “Sex-selective abortion” as pregnancy termination based on predicted sex. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sex-selective, abortion and pregnancy.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sex-selective abortion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.