The plague of abortion has adversely affected the entire world, particularly the Asian region. The most common reason behind the prevalence of abortion in Asia is the preference given to the male child in Asian culture. The people in this part of the world seek to obtain sex selective abortion when they come to know that the baby in the mother’s womb is a girl. This research aims to examine the prevalence of sex selective abortion in Asia on the basis of the cultural behaviors, perceptions and attitudes of the people. This paper will use the past researches and reports on this subject in order to achieve the above stated research objective. The purpose of carrying out this study is to make an urge to the people to change their behavior, mind sets and attitude towards son preference so as to discourage and prohibit the practice of sex selective abortion in the society besides protecting reproductive autonomy of the women in Asia. This desire to have a son includes an array of attitudes that prevails the gender biased actions and beliefs. The core factor on which the son preference attitude is based is the stereotypical thinking that the girls and boys are confined in their abilities with respect to their biological sex (Chamarbagwala, 2011). The practice of sex selection is adopted to fulfill the desire of having a son by the technological means available to ensure the gender of the expected baby and then prevent the birth through abortion if the child is found to be a girl. The sex selection practice may vary on the basis of the intensity of the preference given to a boy in the society, social attitudes and public policies with respect to fertility and birth control, the availability and accessibility to technologies and the economic development. As for instance, the people of India and China became more anxious to ascertain that they have their first born to be a son when the government enforced the law of limiting one or two children per family (Miller, 2001). Despite the fact that the sex selective abortion uses the technology of ultrasound and other newer technologies as well, like the sperm sorting or pre-implantation diagnosis, however, the technological advancement and the availability of these technologies cannot be blamed for the prevalence of sex selective abortion. Nevertheless, the easy accessibility to these newer technologies has certainly facilitated the practice of sex selection. Also, the culture, the education, the government policies and the society play a very vital role in shaping the desire of having a boy. Another major reason for the prevalence of abortion in Asia is the sex at the age of adolescence. The young people entering in to adolescence in Asia are unaware of protected sex as sex education is considered as a taboo in this part of the world, so these juveniles get engaged in unsafe sexual contact that leads to making the young girls pregnant. Subsequently to which, they are left with no other option but to terminate their pregnancy. All these aspects will be deeply analyzed in this research paper in order to reach to the conclusion. The paper will then provide recommendations to deal with the issue according to the findings of the study.
References
Chamarbagwala, R. (2011). Sibling composition and selective gender-based survival bias. Journal of Population Economics, 24(3), 935-955. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-010-0314-z
Miller, B.D. (2001). Female selective abortion in Asia: patterns, policies. Debates 103(4)
www.jstor.org/stable/684130
