14 held over service revealing sex of unborn babies
Shanghai Daily, May 22, 2014
Fourteen people have been held for allegedly running an illegal business offering to identify the sex of unborn babies, police said yesterday.
They are said to have sent blood samples taken from pregnant women on China's mainland to Hong Kong for tests to establish the sex of a fetus.
In China, many rural couples prefer to have boys, while in urban areas parents who qualify for a second child often hope to have a son and daughter.
To curb sex-selective abortions, China has banned sex determination since 1994.
But the test is legal in Hong Kong and with huge demand from mainland women, illegal agents have emerged.
Usually, they work with private clinics on China's mainland where doctors take a blood sample which is then sent to Hong Kong, according to Xinhua news agency.
The 14 suspects held include a 35-year-old doctor, surnamed Chen, who works at a private clinic in Wenzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province.
Last year, Chen is alleged to have become involved in a scheme where pregnant women were charged between 5,800 yuan (US$928) and 7,500 yuan for a test.
Blood samples were taken south by long-distance coach drivers going to Shenzhen, in China's southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong.
Chen was promised between 500 and 800 yuan for each deal, with the rest going to illegal agents, Xinhua reported.
By the end of February, Chen and two other suspects had made nearly 200,000 yuan from tests for nearly 300 pregnant women in Wenzhou, it was reported.
Some of the women terminated their pregnancies after learning that they were carrying girls, police said.