No Girls, Please.

For years Rukmini Devi helped Indian couples in the impoverished state of Bihar choose the sex of their children. But in her decades of work, she never once used PGD. Bihar has few ultrasound machines and fewer fertility labs; many of its towns lack even basic health clinics, and most couples don't know their children's gender before birth. But boys are a treasured commodity in Bihar, and if a couple can't choose a child's sex prenatally, they can see a dai like Devi. For 80 cents, says Devi, who is now retired, a dai will help a woman give birth. For 80 cents more, she will take a newborn girl, hold her upside down by the waist and "give a sharp jerk," snapping the spinal cord. She will then declare the infant stillborn. "Many couples insist that we get rid of the baby girl at birth," Devi says. "What can we do?"

It is a question health officials in parts of Asia have been struggling to answer for years. Like most European countries, India, China and South Korea have banned sex selection in any form. High-tech sperm sorting and PGD are just too complex and expensive to catch on in poor areas, even as black-market operations. But the abortion of female fetuses persists--and where it is not available, infanticide takes its place. The cultural bias stems largely from the need for strong boys to do farm labor, but the problem is not limited to poor, rural areas. In prosperous parts of India, clinics regularly identify and abort female fetuses using the same technologies--ultrasound and amniocentesis--they might employ to ensure fetal health. Korean doctors also use ultrasound to detect gender. Under national law they should be jailed, but since the law was made in the 1980s, only about 30 doctors have lost their licenses. Meanwhile experts estimate that 30,000 Korean female fetuses are aborted annually.

As a result, the ratio of infant boys to girls is far off balance. Worldwide, 106 boys are born for every 100 girls--but in Korea, it's 110 to 100. Among fourth-born children, it's an astonishing 168 to 100. In China, statistics are unreliable--some village lists leave out girls entirely--but the last census logged 119 boys per 100 girls, and most Chinese infants up for adoption are female. In India, the ratio is closer to normal but would likely be higher if more rural families had access to ultrasound. In wealthy Haryana, where clinics flourish, there are 114 boys for every 100 girls.

Needless to say, the numbers infuriate the countries' health officials. All three nations have Westernized their economies to some degree, and they yearn to be seen in the same light as European countries, where cultural distaste for gender selection (not to mention selective abortion) has made it possible to successfully ban the practice. More pressingly, says Indian Health Minister Sushma Swaraj, if men continue to condone female feticide and infanticide, there won't be enough women for them to marry. A large class of young single men in China has already emerged; they may be responsible for rising crime and instability in the provinces.

To combat the specter of what Swaraj calls "a daughterless nation," Asian governments may have to create new incentives instead of trying and failing to enforce the bans currently on the books. In China's Huaiyuan County, a pilot program gives parents of girls tax breaks and $240 in cash. "After two years of this campaign, we have achieved remarkable results," a local official told NEWSWEEK, bragging about the new sex ratio in Huaiyuan. For every 100 girls born there, he said, there are just 120 boys.

PHOTO (COLOR): Happy Family? Not always: An abandoned infant in Jiangsu, China, with medical staff

~~~~~~~~

By Mary Carmichael