A novel based on current statistics and facts has shed light on the lengths British Asians are going to to avoid having daughters.
Research from Oxford University has estimated that girl babies are 'disappearing' from British Indian families at a rate approaching 100 a year. As with all official estimates, the reality could well be more.
British Indian communities in this country are failing to produce the number of girl babies that science tells us to expect, which, broadly speaking, is 950 girls for every 1,000 boys.
And how are they doing this? By pursuing a determined programme of sex selection, either by aborting female foetuses or, increasingly - particularly among more affluent families - by doing everything in their power to ensure that the fertilised egg implanted in the mother's womb is a male one. This can be done by a technique known as 'sperm sorting' - where sperm carrying the male Y chromosome are separated from those carrying the female X chromosome - or, more reliably, by IVF.
For a few years, such techniques seemed the answer to an awful lot of devout prayers, but in 2007 - amid mounting controversy about babies being designed to order - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority outlawed gender selection in this way. Specialist clinics in London, Birmingham and Glasgow which had been offering couples the chance to choose the sex of their babies - and which had been advertising extensively in the Punjabi press in Britain - were forced to close.
But the practice goes on, with wealthier British Indian families travelling to the U.S., Europe or indeed to India in their efforts to have a male child.
It is difficult for those of white British origins, who come from a culture where the safe arrival of a healthy baby girl is a cause for celebration, to understand the deep-rooted commitment of British Indian families to what has become known as 'son preference'.
For more on this story follow the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1276902/Britains-hidden-gendercide-How-Britains-Asians-copying-Indian-cousins-aborting-girls.html
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