Vietnam plans law to ban tests on sex of fetus
HANOI - A panel in Vietnam, where abortions rank among the world's highest, said on Friday
it was drafting a law to bar doctors from determining the sex of an unborn child.
Dinh Cong Thoan, head of the team drafting the law, told Reuters it aimed to end the practice of aborting
female children.
"If people know in advance the infant's sex is not to their choosing, they might choose abortion," said
Thoan, of the National Committee for Population and Family Planning. "Society's sexual balance should
be natural, shouldn't it?"
He added, "Vietnamese couples still tend to prefer boys to girls. That's a common Oriental psychology."
Vietnam has 106 males for every 100 females and it is common for couples to check the sex of unborn
children in advance, Thoan said. In some rural provinces the rate was 112 or even 116 males to 100
females, he added.
Thoan said that although the problem of aborting female babies was now less serious than in the past,
nearby China's current surplus of 100 million men over women showed the problem that could arise if the
practice went unchecked.
"A surplus of men could cause far greater social upheaval than a surplus of women," he said. "Men
could start killing each other over women."
Thoan said there would need to be more discussion how to implement the proposal and it would be put
up for comments from government bodies before being submitted to the Standing Committee of the
National Assembly for approval.
Government figures show Vietnam last year recorded 217,691 voluntary abortions, nearly 30,865 natural
abortions, and 470,338 pregnancy terminations through "menstrual regulation," a process of induced
abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy.
Thoan said the law would also follow other nations in calling for limits on genetic engineering of human
beings.
"It's wonderful to be able to clone parts of human bodies for health purposes," he said. "But to create a
whole new person who is 100 percent like someone else would be unnatural. It would create a
machine-like society."
Reuters - November 16, 2001.
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