Prenatal sex discrimination: Dutch midwives seeing more sex-selective abortions

A foetal ultrasound at Slotervaart Hospital in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Photo ANP, Koen Suyk

 By Kathryn Idema - Posted at CNE News:

Published February 7, 2025

When a pregnancy happens, many feel tempted to pop the old question: a boy or a girl? Early ultrasounds turn out to facilitate sex-selective terminations.

Now, it is getting easier to know the gender early. This causes couples to opt for an abortion. According to some midwives from the Netherlands, the increase in sex-selective abortions can be attributed to commercial centres that offer “fun ultrasounds” and advanced screening techniques within ultrasound technology.

This is one of the first hard evidence of sex-selective abortion in the Netherlands. Until now, reports on this were limited to Britain, although it is banned there too. Yet among the large communities from India and Pakistan, many girls are said to be aborted there, just like in the countries of origin.

In a survey among at least fifty midwives across the country, at least fifteen say that the “sex of the child” was responsible for a termination.

Why have an abortion after the gender is revealed? Many of those abortions occur when the parents already have one or more kids with the same gender, the survey reveals in the Dit report. It can also happen among non-Dutch households or those with a “migration background.” Yet, quite a few who want a termination are also Dutch families.

“I happened to experience last year that the termination of the pregnancy because of sex really happened three or four times in six weeks," says midwife and sonographer, Daphne Mol to De Koningswens which was also published in Dit, a program from the Christian broadcaster, Evangelische Omroep.

Continue here...