Apr 15, 2008 / 17:28 pm
The practice of sex-selective abortions that has unbalanced the male-female ratio in many Asian and Muslim countries is now believed to be happening among immigrant communities in the United States.
In a sex-selective abortion, parents choose to abort their unborn child based on whether he or she is of the sex they prefer. In communities where the practice is common, female babies tend to be disproportionately aborted.
According to Stephen W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, a recent study from the National Academy of Sciences examined whether sex-selective abortion happened in the United States. Researchers Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund, examining figures from the 2000 U.S. Census, noticed that U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents tended to be male.
Investigating what they called “son-biased sex ratios,” the researchers examined the effect of birth order. First-born children of the Asian demographic groups under study showed a normal sex ratio at birth, roughly 106 girls for every 100 boys. If the first child was a son, the sex ratio of the second-born child was also normal.