Efforts to Overcome Sex Selection in Reproduction in Asia

Abstract

There is significant abuse of medical diagnostic technology in some Asian countries to select male fetuses and embryos over female fetuses, which leads to an imbalanced sex ration at birth. The paper discusses the ethics of sex selection, and reviews policies that have been used. Legal measures to prevent this in China and India are described, as well as the reasons that those efforts have not solved the problem. There are also growing uses of technology for sex selection in Nepal and Vietnam. The Republic of Korea has used policies and education to reverse preference for boys, and there is discussion of the reasons behind this. New partners and policies are required to overcome this serious abuse of biotechnology that is responsible for close to one hundred million missing girls in the world population.