Vietnam to ban gender testing
HANOI - The authorities in Vietnam are preparing a law
which will stop doctors from performing tests
on pregnant women which will tell them
whether they will have a son or daughter.
The draft law is aimed
at stopping the
abortion of females in a
society where many
parents prefer to have
sons.
Senior officials are
concerned that
Vietnam's current
population imbalance,
where there are more
men than women,
could get worse.
The draft law to ban the gender determination
technology is expected to be subject to a
general debate before it is sent to the national
assembly for approval next year.
High abortion rate
It is partly because of years of war that
Vietnam has more men than women.
But in this largely rural
and traditional Asian
society, many couples
prefer to have sons to
carry on the family line
and to care for them in
old age.
Vietnam has one of the world's highest rates of
abortion.
It is used as a contraceptive and, the
authorities fear, as a way of ensuring that
pregnancy results in sons, not daughters.
Two-child policy
The new law to ban gender testing is being
prepared with the support of the National
Committee for Population and Family Planning.
It has warned that
having an imbalance of
men to women could
lead to violence as men
compete for partners.
Vietnam's rulers urge
people to control the
size of their families as
part of their economic
and social
responsibilities to the
country, where the
population has reached
about 80 million.
Women are encouraged to delay having
children until their early twenties and there is a
two-child policy.
In the most extreme cases, parents can be
penalised for having a third child.
They can be expelled from the Communist
Party or have their land confiscated.
Gender imbalance
But Vietnam has decided against a one-child
policy after looking across the border to China
where the policy has led to a massive gender
imbalance.
There is also concern about the rate of
abortions in Vietnam.
The average is for a women to have two
abortions in her lifetime.
The high rate is attributed to the use of
terminations as contraception and also to the
trend for urban living and, among the young,
more liberal attitudes to sex.
By Clare Arthurs - BBC News - November 18, 2001.
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