Abortion causing huge gender imbalance in Vietnam, UN admits

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

VIETNAM, December 10, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After decades of involvement in coercive population control measures, including abortion, contraception, and sterilization of women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is admitting that policies it has championed are causing a serious imbalance in the ratio of male to female births in Vietnam.

In a series of public statements that began in June of this year, the UNFPA notes that “Vietnamese parents’ long-standing preference for sons, increased access to sex selection technology and declining fertility rates, which have increased pressure on smaller families to fulfill their wish for a son, are the main causes for the rapid changes in Viet Nam’s sex ratio at birth in favor of males.”

The agency adds that “in Viet Nam, ultrasound and abortion services are legal and easy to obtain. However, the identification of the sex of a fetus and sex-selective abortions are illegal. Nevertheless, these services are available in private clinics.”

As LifeSiteNews reported in March, Vietnam’s own statistics indicate that about 112 boys are now being born for every 100 girls, with localized increases to between 115 to 123 boys for every 100 girls in some areas.

The overall abortion rate in Vietnam is skyrocketing, and women now have an average of more than three abortions during their lifetime; the practice is especially prevalent among teenagers.  In addition, the Vietnamese government actively encourages abortion with a coercively-imposed two-child limit, although enforcement measures are more lax than China’s famous one child policy.

Bruce Campbell of UNFPA Vietnam laments that the imbalanced sex ratio “could fuel the sex work trade as well as trafficking.”  In its latest alert, the agency warns that if the current trend continues unchecked, the national sex ratio at birth (SRB) will reach 115 boys for ever 100 girls in only four years, and the adult SRB will reach 113 by 2049. However, the UNFPA is hoping that government campaigns will prevent this from occurring.

David del Fresno of Spain’s Efrat Institute states in a recent press communiqué that the UNFPA is “putting its hands on its head and is trying to counteract the fearful consequences of the disaster that they themselves have created.”

Noting that the same problem of imbalanced sex ratios is cropping up in other countries, Fresno adds that “the problem began to be noticed in China and India, but the alarm has now been sounded in Vietnam and will soon begin in all of the far east, threatening the stability of the region even more and, by extension, threatening world peace.”