NEW YORK – The U.S. lawmakers are accusing Asian Americans, specifically Indians and Chinese for the increase in female foeticide in America, reports The Indian Express. They planned to introduce a new law, Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) in the House of Representatives to prohibit sex-selective abortion, but the bill was opposed by right bodies and women organizations.
The idea of this new law was put forward by Congressman Trent Franks and according to it a doctor could face up to five-year imprisonment for performing abortion in cases where race and sex prove to be the reasons behind aborting the child. Moreover, medical experts who do not report abortions which are suspected of race-based will have to face 1 year sentence.
“… a number of academic papers have now published evidence that the practice of sex-selection abortion is demonstrably increasing here in the United States, especially, but not exclusively, in the Asian immigrant community,” Franks said on the floor of the House.
“A study by researchers at the University of Connecticut, which was published in Prenatal Diagnosis, found that the male-to-female live birth sex ratio in the United States for Chinese, Asian Indians, and Koreans clearly exceeded biological variation for third births and beyond. Deliberate prenatal sex selection is the only plausible explanation,” he said.
“Dr Sunita Puri and three other researchers at the University of California interviewed 65 immigrant Indian women in the United States who had sought or were seeking sex-selection abortion. They found that 40 per cent of the women interviewed had deliberately aborted unborn baby girls previously and that nearly 90 percent of the women who were currently carrying unborn baby girls were also currently seeking to abort them,” Franks said.
