Sex Selection - Legality

Legality

Sex selection is officially prohibited in China, but the Chinese government admits that the practice is widespread, especially in rural areas of China and among lawless groups such as ghettoized migrant workers in cities (despite denials by the government-sponsored studies).

Social sex selection is illegal in India. To ensure this, prenatal determination of sex through ultrasound is also illegal in India. These laws are instituted to combat the prevalent practice of sex-selective abortion. However, these laws have generally failed to be effective in rural areas and, despite education efforts, sex-selective abortion continues to be widely practiced there.

Sex selection is legal in most of the world, and it is practiced particularly in Western countries, but is more limited in Eastern countries, such as India or China. There is fertility tourism from the United Kingdom to the United States for sex selection, because preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD, a potential expansion of IVF), which can be used for sex selection, is prohibited in the UK, except when it is used to screen for genetic diseases, while the laws in the US are more relaxed in this subject.

Read more about this topic:  Sex Selection