A new internet sex test that promises to identify the sex of the fetus just six weeks into the pregnancy seems to be a boon for those who prefer only the male child and are constantly digging graves of millions of unborn lives.

Sex-selective abortion, the perfect means of prenatal discrimination has resulted in skewed sex ratios eliminating millions of baby girls the world over. Society is strewn with this brutal bane of gendercide.

All you need for the “Pink or Blue’ test is a single drop of the pregnant woman’s blood and the home test comes only for a £189 mail order. There exists a fetal DNA in an expectant mother’s blood after six-weeks of conception until the completion of nine-months or the delivery. DNA Worldwide, the company behind it, claims that the test is 98 per cent accurate and hence makes it more luring and dangerous.

It produces the same information usually, first given at 20 weeks of the pregnancy by an ultrasound scan. However, some health authorities have already stopped revealing that information for fear of ‘wrong-sex’ terminations. This test defeats the very purpose. This home test spells a death warrant for the unborn girl child, who in many cultures is already discriminated to death even before birth.

What is driving parents to kill their baby girls?

Major economic concerns in terms of a large dowry compel many Indian parents to shun daughters. Diagnostic teams with ultrasound scanners, which detect the sex of a child, advertise with catch lines such as ’spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.’

Even though under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman, to determine the gender of the fetus, are illegal, thousands of clinics across the country still carry out illegal sex- selective abortions. Many unethical doctors provide a legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket; gender determination remains a big business in India. A cultural preference for sons over daughters has twisted India’s sex ratio. More than 10m female births in India may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years.

The disastrous impact of the consumerist culture spawned by globalization has been a driving force in pushing up dowry rates and castigating brides in flames. So, instead of finishing off female feticide it spreads to new areas and communities.

In China, the traditional preference for male offspring, along with the central government’s one-child-only policy (part of an attempt to combat overpopulation), have combined to create rising levels of female infanticide. According to novelist Talia Carner in China, infanticide is mostly attributed to the government’s policies and their executions, resulting in systematic gender-selected killing.

The problem is most egregious in rural China where boys are valued as extra hands that support their parents in their old age. Girls, who by custom move in with their in-laws after marriage, are viewed as damaged goods. If a baby is unwanted, she is abandoned, suffocated or drowned soon after birth.

Though the company claims that they have decided not to sell the early gender test into China and India, I am sure desperate people will find a way around that.

Female infanticide to feticide

The phenomenon of female infanticide is as old as many cultures, and has likely accounted for millions of gender-selective deaths throughout history. Female infanticide is the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and from the low value associated with the birth of females. Long before medical abortion became available, unwanted girls were killed after birth or not given enough food and medicine to survive.

These deep-rooted gender biases are worsening as scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions are improving. Modern technology, including machines like Ultrasound, which make it possible to determine the gender of a fetus, have spread from big city hospitals to small country clinics and now the Internet will make it all the more easier. Consequently, infanticide has given way to feticide.

Killing female fetuses is the most brutal and destructive manifestation of the anti-female bias that pervades ‘patriarchal’ societies. Then, what will be the catastrophic cultural and societal ramifications if sex selection carries on? What will become of men who will be unable to find brides 20 years hence? Will we have more rapists in the world then? Do we really want a world without daughters, wives and mothers? We sure are heading towards it...

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