China law threatens jail for sex-selective abortions

[MountainLaurel]

A new Chinese law calls for prison terms of up to three years and fines for doctors and other health workers who assist in telling the gender of unborn babies, leading to abortions, state media said on Monday.

The legal amendment would give new teeth to a government campaign to outlaw the selective abortion of female fetuses and correct an imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls that has grown since China's one-child policy was introduced more than 20 years ago.

"The revision is aimed to prevent the selection of a child's gender when not conducted for medical purposes," An Jian, a member of China's parliament who discussed the amendment over the weekend, was quoted as saying.

snip

Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in the world's most populous nation. About 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=55299+26-Dec-2005+RTRS&srch=china

[SteppingRazor]

1. Anyone see this possibly leadign to infanticide? n/t

[WePurrsevere]

2. So instead these families have a girl that gets dumped at the nearest

orphanage where if she's lucky she gets adopted by a foreign couple who want a child. The family can then keep trying to have to all important male child.

If anyone's interested here's a tiny bit more info on many girls in China: http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Dec/82748.htm

[woodsprite]

3. How much money is flowing into their economy from the

overseas adoptions? I have 2 friends who adopted this way from China, 1 friend who adoption 2 children from Russia this way, and each adoption cost more than my IVF did.

[WePurrsevere]

4. My niece was adopted from China and my nephew from Korea. My mom told

me it was about $30 or 40k but that included a trip for two for a couple of weeks to China while picking up their daughter. I'm sure the money paid out to the agencies there, etc helps the economies of the countries the children are adopted from. Also by having foreigners adopt their unwanted children these countries are saving quite a bit that they'd have to put out to care for them until they're old enough to leave.

[politicat]

5. "The Diamond Age" coming to life....

If you're not a SF fan, you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but one of the subplots in Stephenson's Diamond Age is the rescue of a million girls from China's interior, to be raised on massive cargo ships just off the Chinese shore. A second subplot concerns the uprising of millions of young men who can't find wives, jobs or meaning in their lives and so turn into an army of terrorists....

Sound familar?