Ultrasound ads promote female abortion, immigrant society charges
Karen
August 2, 2007
CBC News
Advertisements for ultrasound clinics that appear in Canadian Punjabi
newspapers are promoting the abortion of female fetuses, charges the
head of an immigrant society in Surrey.
Charan Gill, of the Progressive Intercultural Community Services
Society, fought against ads for ultrasound clinics in community
newspapers 15 years ago.
Now Gill is shocked that ads for ultrasound clinics are running in two
Punjabi-language newspapers, the Ajit Weekly, based in Mississauga,
Ont., and with a B.C. edition, and the Hamdard Weekly, published
weekly from Toronto, New York, Vancouver and California, and the
Indian city of Chandigarh.
The papers are distributed across Canada.
One ad provides B.C. phone numbers, including a line for Punjabi
speakers, for anyone wanting to make appointments at Koala Labs, an
ultrasound clinic in Blaine, Wash.
It reads, "You are told the sex immediately."
"It's really, really sad that some newspapers, for sake of money, are
misleading the public. The end result is they will tell the sex of the
baby so that people that don't want baby girls can abort it," said
Gill on Wednesday in Surrey.
No proof of ads' effects: clinic head
Dr. Stephen Jones, who runs the Koala clinic in Washington, said
there's no proof of how couples are using ultrasound data.
But an Ottawa-based family rights group says statistics suggest
abortions targeting female fetuses are happening in B.C.'s Indo-
Canadian community.
Andrea Mrozek, of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, says a
study last year shows an unnatural boy-girl ratio in Surrey where many
Lower Mainland Indo-Canadian families live.
"We found gender imbalance between boys and girls looking at census
data going back to as early as 1990," said Mrozek, the institute's
manager of research and communications.
There were deviations in Surrey's boy-girl ratios, with 108 boys to
100 girls, Mrozek said.
Sex selection is a factor, said Mrozek, who believes female abortions
explain why.
More statistics on abortions need to be made public so that the issue
can be studied further, she said.
"Canadians need to step up to the plate and clarify that that's not an
acceptable reason to abort a fetus."
Corrections and Clarifications
The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada is based in Ottawa, not
Calgary, as previously reported.
Aug. 2, 2007/2:50 p.m. ET