Concealing gender for 30 weeks suggested
BY DEREK ABMA AND ROBERT HILTZ, Postmedia News
17 Jan 2012
It is hoped revealing sex later in pregnancy could stop practice of aborting females in Asian communities
An editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is calling for doctors performing prenatal ultrasounds to conceal the sex of the baby for the first 30 weeks, to curb a trend toward “female feticide” in the Asian community.
While reaction to the idea of withholding such information from parents has been mixed, there appears to be broad agreement that the practice of female feticide should be eliminated.
“Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male- to- female ratio in some ethnic groups,” said the editorial by interim editor- in- chief Dr. Rajendra Kale.
“A woman has the right to medical information about herself [ but] the sex of the fetus is medically irrelevant information — except when managing rare sex- linked illnesses — and does not affect care,” the editorial states. “The solution is to postpone the disclosure of medically irrelevant information to women until after about 30 weeks of pregnancy.”
Dr. Nahid Azad, president of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, said if the problem is widespread the blanket policy is an effective way to combat feticide, but she added the Canadian Medical Association should undertake a study to determine where the practice is most prevalent in Canada.
“I cannot see only one organization or one specific policy would be able to tackle that,” she said. “If it’s widespread, if it’s a growing problem, then we do need to have some kind of blanket type policy for everyone. If there are pockets [ where it happens], and there are particularly some provinces [ where] this is being practised, or there is good documentation or understanding, that requires a much higher level of scrutiny.”
Dr. Shelly Ross, an obstetrician and international liaison for the FMWC, said it is not likely the policy would have any effect on the practice of feticide. “The rules, at least in B. C., are that we don’t tell them for 20 weeks,” Ross said. “But I find that in this modern day and age, if we say, ‘ No, we’re not going to tell you,’ [ the patients] will go out to the private [ doctor] and find out themselves.”
Ross stressed the organization is wholly against feticide, but she doesn’t feel extending the current time frame for keeping the gender secret would make any difference.
In an interview, Kale said 30 weeks was picked as an approximate time to start providing mothers information on their fetus’s sex because, after that point, it would be difficult for anyone to get an abortion without a good medical reason for doing so.
The Asian mania for having sons continues . . . and it's an abomination.
