Lucrative trade remains in illegal fetus gender identification

Ye Gaoli, a farmer in Cangnan county, Zhejiang Province, was pregnant again. Ye already had an 11-year-old daughter, but she and her husband desperately wanted a boy.

Identifying the gender of a fetus without permission is illegal on the Chinese mainland. However, as with many pregnant women, Ye was willing to take the risk of finding out the baby's gender, and then decide whether she wanted to keep it or not.

Ye contacted a private clinic, took an ultrasound and decided to abort upon finding it was a girl, at a cost of 3,800 yuan ($611).

Ye is not alone in this. Due to the family planning policy and Chinese traditional preferences for male children, a large number of pregnant women visit private clinics or even individuals, mostly without medical certificates, to discover the sex of their unborn child and have abortions. The fetuses are usually 3 to 4 months old or even months older.

"Many pregnant women would have an abortion if they found out the fetus was a girl, because they think female heirs are at a disadvantage compared with male heirs," Zhang Zhongtang, an expert on family planning from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Fertile industry

In early March this year, four people, who carried out 736 illegal ultrasounds and 15 gender-selective abortions in Zhejiang, were jailed for terms ranging from one to three years, reports said.

Headed by Liu Ciwang and his wife Huang Xiaomiao, neither of whom had medical licenses, the gang used portable ultrasound machines to check the gender of fetuses and carried out abortions in vehicles from February 2010 to May 2012.

They purchased two minivans, one to pick up pregnant women and the other to carry out the ultrasounds and abortions. The pregnant women were driven to remote areas in Cangnan and Pingyang counties to receive medical attention.

The gang was efficiently organized, with each member taking charge of specific duties. Liu shouldered the responsibility of attracting potential customers by handing out business cards, picking up pregnant women and taking the money. Huang operated the ultrasound machine and induced the abortions while Li Bingfeng and Guo Ling were employed as drivers.

"Pregnant women would call them according to the number on the name card. The gang members would tell these women to meet them at a specific time and place. Then, they would dispatch a minivan to pick them up, drive them to remote areas in the countryside, and carry out the ultrasound tests or abortions," Zhang Rongmin, a local judge who took charge of the case, told the Global Times.

The business was lucrative, Zhang said. It cost around 60,000 yuan to buy the vehicles and ultrasound machines, but the gang charged 800 to 1,200 yuan for a gender test and 3,800 yuan for an induced abortion.

He added that most of the perpetrators were unlicensed and that it was difficult to gather evidence against them, given their mobility and the lengths they took to keep their operations a secret.

However, it appeared that in certain cases, some medical institutions including private clinics worked as middlemen to get commissions from the gang by introducing new customers to them. When not working in their vans, they also set up shop in rented hotel rooms with hired lookouts keeping watch for the police.

According to the testimony provided by the court, in the Cangnan case, the minibus in which the abortions were carried out was not equipped with any disinfection facilities, and the poor medical condition put women's lives at risk.

"Pregnant women were asked to take an anesthetic. Hours later, when abdominal cramps occurred, they were injected with oxytocin to start the abortion," Zhang told the Global Times.