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China Outlawing Selective Abortions
China is planning to make selective abortions of female fetuses illegal as a way to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said. "The government takes it as an urgent task to correct the gender imbalance of newborns," Zhang Weiqing, minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission, was quoted as saying Thursday by Xinhua.Traditionally, sons have been more valued as a way for the family name to continue and as a means for parents to be cared for as they get older. Government figures show 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls - a gap blamed largely on parents aborting baby girls to try again for a boy under the country's one-child policy. Zhang said the commission would begin drafting revisions to the criminal law "to effectively ban fetus gender detection and selective abortion other than for legitimate medical purposes." The central government hopes to even out the imbalance by 2010, Xinhua said. ... And for those generations where the imbalance was an economic choice imposed by the one-child rule - uh, tough shit. No Posted by: .com 2005-01-08 |
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