WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

INTERVENTIONS TO BALANCE SEX RATIO AT BIRTH IN RURAL CHINA
Concerning administrative management, all provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities have defined an administrative
review and approval procedure to make induced abortion beyond 14-
16 weeks of pregnancy more difficult. Local family planning
regulations were modified according to the Population and Family
Planning Law (2002) and now state that prenatal sex identification and
sex-selective abortions are illegal. Some provincial regulations have
detailed definition and punishment for each violation. For example, the
Family Planning regulations in Hebei Province state that couples who
undergo induced abortion beyond 14 weeks of the pregnancy without
prior authorization from the county family planning department will
not be given official approval for another pregnancy.
All these regulations also describe the protocol for using ultrasound
scan machines. For example, it is required that two technicians
should be present when using ultra-sound machines for maternal
check-up, to prevent any possible sex-identification practice by
individuals.
4. Discussion: intervention based on combined effort and with a
clear target
The ongoing interventions, if well designed and implemented, will
have some short term and long term effects. The prohibition of
prenatal sex identification would stall the practice temporarily, but the
effectiveness in the long run is questionable if the causes of girl
discrimination are not eliminated. Some local regulations limit the
practice of induced abortion during the last trimester only for medical
needs, which may force such a practice to go underground and make it
more harmful to women. Meanwhile, formulated socioeconomic
policies and social security systems improving girls’ environment and
helping families with only female children would be more effective in
the long run, but the implementation process needs time. Any
expectation of immediate impact is not realistic. If the main efforts
were put on the short-term effect intervention, the impact would be
very limited, while more opportunity and more time will be lost taking
care of more difficult but long-term issues.
Not all couples in childbearing age have the intension to select the
sex of foetus; the practice is quite limited and has some clear local
patterns. 8 Therefore, the target group needs to be identified. The pilot
8 A simulation with a size of 10,000 shows that if ten percent of pregnant women go
through prenatal sex screenings at their second pregnancy, and if they abort female
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