16/09/2011 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Strasbourg, 16.09.2011 - Adopting an opinion on the report on prenatal sex selection which is to be debated by the PACE on 4 October, the Social Affairs Committee pointed out that while, in theory, prenatal sex selection could also be used to prevent the birth of boys, it in fact serves essentially to prevent female births. As in the case of domestic violence, it is therefore necessary to address the main cause of prenatal sex selection, the inequality between women and men.
The committee, on the basis of an opinion prepared by Jordi Xuclà i Costa (Spain, ALDE), emphasised that women need to be given the means of resisting the cultural and societal pressure that they face to give birth to a son. The more educated women are, the more rights they have (inheritance rights, right to pass on their name and nationality to their children), and the more archaic cultural practices violating women's rights (dowry system, forced marriages, child marriages) are abolished, then the more chance women will have of standing up to pressure and being as proud of giving birth to a daughter as to a son.