This just in, according to the Canadian Association Medical Journal. (Not exactly a bastion of the pro-life movement.)
An editorial in a major Canadian medical journal Monday urges doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus from all pregnant women until 30 weeks to prevent sex-selective abortion by Asian immigrants. A separate article in the same issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that Canada has become “a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favor of having sons” due to advanced prenatal testing and easy access to abortion. “Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups,” said the editorial by interim editor-in-chief Rajendra Kale.
So why would not telling the sex until 30 weeks limit abortion in a country with no abortion laws? Likely because doctors don’t like doing partial birth abortions on completely viable fetuses. Legally, however, if some enterprising doctor believed in the cultural disposition that encourages having boys, and wanted to do these late term abortions, no one could stop him/her.
by 
I have no direct evidence that partial birth abortions are done in Canada. Every late-term abortion that I’ve ever come across is a prostaglandin abortion usually with feticide.
I think it’s wrong to withold information from the 99.99% of the population that would not even consider aborting on the basis of sex. Parents have a right to know their children.
The onus should be on abortion providers and the women undergoing abortion, not those who do not want abortions.
I’m with Suzanne. Witholding information as an attempt to reduce abortions doesn’t sit right with me, either.
It does seem a bit like punishing the whole class when everyone knows which student pulled the fire alarm…
I tend to think knowing the sex of your child humanizes the baby. Men, for example, who are distant from the pregnancy, can look forward to having a son or a daughter.
That said, to play devil’s advocate, it is not a right to know the sex of your child. There was an era where we didn’t do ultrasounds, and babies were just born, no additional info given or required.
No, it’s not a right to know the sex of your baby. But, given that the doctors, having seen the ultrasounds, DO know the sex of your baby, it is your decision whether or not they tell you. They’re not legally allowed (in the UK; I don’t know about Canada) to withhold information from you about any lumps or sprains or stabbing pains you may have. Why on Earth should the sex of your baby be an exception to that?
There are areas in the UK where hospitals will not tell you the sex of your baby because you might abort girls. I’m in Northern Ireland, where abortion is illegal, and our hospital won’t tell you the sex of your baby for fear of being sued if they turn out to be wrong — which apparently has happened. Going off on a tangent here, but that’s always made me wonder about the idiocy of the parents. All news is on the Net these days, and archived. So one day, your daughter Googles herself and finds an old news story about her parents being so angry they didn’t get a boy that they sued the hospital.
Back on topic, I find the whole thing baffling. People who are all for the right to abort tend to be against sex selection — or selection for eye or hair colour or other superficial things. This is insane, to want people to have a right but to insist that they only ever exercise that right for the same reasons you yourself would choose. If it’s a right, it’s a right. The only people in any reasonable position to oppose sex selection via abortion are those who oppose abortion.
(Sorry about the separate comments, but your blog claimed that all of them together in one comment was “a bit spammy” for some reason.)
Squander–
It’s the sex word. Use it too many times and your comment will be rejected.
That’s a bit of a problem on this blog, isn’t it?