A Washington state reproductive clinic is targeting South Asian families in B.C. with an advertisement promising clients a chance to "create the family you want."
The ad, which appears on the Indo-Canadian Voice newspaper website, features children in traditional clothing with a message offering prospective parents pre-conception gender determination.
"For family balancing purposes," it reads.
Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act, introduced in 2004, prohibits any procedure designed to impact the gender of an embryo, except to prevent a sex-linked disorder or disease.
But Dr. Albert Yuzpe, co-founder of the Genesis Fertility Centre in Vancouver, said the demand for such procedures persists in Canada, and it's not surprising to see U.S. companies spending their advertising dollars north of the border.
"The clinics that are advertising this are clinics that are for-profit, and so that brings in patients," Yuzpe said. "It's done a lot in the United States… either because couples specifically want one sex, or they already have two, three, four of one sex and would like one of the other."
Yuzpe said it's not uncommon for couples to inquire about gender-selective in vitro fertilization at his clinic, and some families go even further in their pursuit of a specific gender for their child.
"What has been going on for many years is that couples – and I'm not suggesting any one ethnic group – who were wanting to do gender selection would go to the U.S., have an ultrasound, have the infant's sex diagnosed and if it wasn't the sex they wanted they would have it terminated."
The ad remained on the Indo-Canadian Voice as of Tuesday afternoon, but by the evening the paper's general manager told CTV News that the advertisement had been taken down. Assisted Human Reproduction Canada says it's checking into the legality of running the plug.
News of the advertisement comes just days after the release of a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggesting that South Korean and Indian-born women in Canada have an unusually high proportion of boys born as second and third babies.
It found Indian mothers in Ontario birthed 111 boys for every 100 girls among second children, and 136 boys for every 100 girls among third children. There are normally 105 boys born for every 100 girls in Canada.
The authors of the study point out they have no way of knowing what accounts for their findings, and did not have information on pregnancy terminations among their subjects.
