A dropping birth rate is not the only population problem challenging the country, as the gender ratio of newborns recorded 109 males for every 100 females last year, the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) said yesterday.
The natural ratio should be 105 males per 100 females, bureau Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said. Based on this ratio, the higher number of male births means that “around 4,000 baby girls disappeared last year,” Chiou said.
This suggests that the missing female fetuses had been aborted, she said.
BHP statistics show 191,310 babies were born in Taiwan last year. Of the obstetrics and gynecology departments at hospitals and clinics nationwide that delivered at least 80 infants last year, 34 observed a notable gender imbalance, the bureau said.
One of the facilities even recorded an astonishingly high gender ratio of 178.13 male infants per 100 females, the bureau said.
No clinics specializing in artificial insemination were included on the list and the bureau has excluded the possibility that the births in the 34 clinics were delivered based on “orders” for male babies, it said.
That means the only explanation for the skewed figures is elective gender-based abortions, bureau officials said.
Su Yi-ning (蘇怡寧), a spokesman for the Taiwan Society of Perinatology, said big hospitals would not accept “orders” for male babies.
The success rate for separating the Y sperm from semen has reached 70 percent, he said, however this does not guarantee a male child.
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