The Department of Health yesterday said it would step up inspections of medical institutions suspected of engaging in sex-selective abortion, amid reports that the nation’s sex ratio of newborns has risen in favor of boys.
The nation’s relatively high average of 1.11 boys born for every girl puts Taiwan at No. 9 behind countries such as China, India and Vietnam that traditionally value male children more than female children, statistics by the department’s Bureau of Health Promotion showed.
While most mothers learn the gender of their baby by looking at an ultrasound about 19 or 20 weeks into their pregnancy, those who are considering aborting female infants can learn the sex of the baby as early as six to eight weeks into the pregnancy by sending blood samples to private testing facilities.
To address the problem of medical institutions that illegally and unethically “guarantee boys” to parents who do not want a female baby, the department said it had formed a task force involving various bureaus to control the situation and investigate medical institutions with suspicious male-to-female infant ratios.
“So far, we have targeted about 20 medical institutions and 50 doctors with abnormal [baby sex] ratios for our investigation,” Bureau of Health Promotion Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said.
Chiou said private companies that provide services to test the sex of a baby are navigating in a “gray zone” and are more difficult to catch, because examination of the fetal DNA for genetic abnormalities does not go against accepted norms in the medical field.
However, she said that because some medical institutions and biotechnology companies use polymerase chain reactions analysis (PCR) to test the sex of a fetus, health authorities are considering monitoring and controlling the reagent used in PCR testing to prevent abuse.
Health authorities will issue fines of between NT$50,000 and NT$250,000 for violations of the Medical Care Act (醫療法) to medical institutions that “guarantee boys” or claim accurate baby sex testing, the department said. Doctors and hospitals that perform illegal gender testing or sex-selective abortions could be fined between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 and have their licenses revoked.
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