Now It's A Crime

Had the ratio of girls to boys not become so skewed, would this be a crime?

A doctor in India and his assistant have been sentenced to two years in prison for revealing the sex of a fetus and then agreeing to abort it.

This is the first time medical professionals have been jailed in such a case.

Under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the foetus are illegal.

It has been estimated that 10m female feotuses may have been terminated in India in the past 20 years.

Dr Anil Sabani and Kartar Singh were caught in a sting operation in the northern state of Haryana.

Government officials sent in three pregnant women as decoy patients to find out if the clinic would carry out abortions based on sex selection.

Audio and video evidence showed the doctor telling one woman that tests had revealed that she was carrying a 'female fetus and it would be taken care of'.

A cultural preference for sons over daughters has skewed India's sex ratio.

But convictions are rare due to lax and corrupt officials and the slow judicial system.

The government brought in laws 12 years ago to stop the practice of aborting female fetuses.

I would apologize for sounding cynical and am glad that women are no longer to abort babies soley based on gender but, honestly, if this weren't about a pussy shortage for the men who are now coming of age, would this practice have been stopped and criminalized?