Nepal, a country with deeply ingrained patriarchal values and culture, has limited evidence regarding the practices of sex selection and sex-selective abortion. This study aimed to investigate the attitudes and practices surrounding sex-selective abortion (SSA) and the factors associated with it. A cross-sectional study design was used to collect data from 320 women between the ages of 15 and 49, who had at least one child under the age of 5 and lived in the Bhaktapur district, Nepal. A total of 19.7% of the participants had undergone an abortion, with 39.6% of those being SSAs. Factors like women empowerment and preference for smaller family size are associated with women\'s favorable attitude toward SSA. In multivariate analysis, women who faced pressure from their families to have a son and those who were aware of Nepal\'s abortion laws were more likely to abort a female fetus.

The so-called ″eugenic″ abortion has an extraordinary differential nuance compared to the other legally established modalities of abortion, which is specified in the way the woman\'s decision is formed, which is not prior, but a consequence of medical information received about the foetus; a decision, moreover, in which there is a clear ″discriminatory″ component, since the abortion is produced exclusively because of the disability of the foetus. This uniqueness requires attention to the context in which eugenic decisions are made, because they involve three fundamental elements which, depending on how they are made, may or may not lead to abortion: firstly, the opportunity to carry out certain prenatal tests in the absence of risk factors. Secondly, the enormous responsibility of health professionals in informing parents about the results of a prenatal test. Thirdly, the point of view of future parents, who should avoid a eugenic conception of parenthood, being aware that what is developing in the woman\'s womb is their son or daughter, not a generic embryo affected by anomalies; and that a son or daughter is a personal reality,beyond his o her capabilities. The paper addresses these three issues, which make eugenic abortion a discriminatory and avoidable practice, since the aim is not to prevent the woman\'s decision to abort, but to endorse her primary decision to continue with the pregnancy on the basis of a positive, non-eugenic view of disability.

Bans on sex-selective abortions are typically implemented to make sex ratios more equitable, but they may have adverse effects on surviving children. We examine the impacts of a ban on prenatal sex selection in India on postnatal health outcomes. We first show that the ban increased the share of female children born to mothers, especially among firstborn female families. Strikingly, we also find that the ban led to a worsening of mortality outcomes for both girls and boys in firstborn female families. In terms of mechanisms, we find that fertility increases in firstborn female families after the ban, pointing to the following channel: firstborn female families are disproportionately affected by the ban and are more likely to use the son-biased fertility stopping rule to achieve a desired number of sons. Children in firstborn female families likely face greater competition for parental resources, which may worsen their health.

Preference for sons and smaller families and, in the case of China, a one-child policy, have contributed to missing girl births in India and China over the last few decades due to sex-selective abortions. Selective abortion occurs also among Indian and Chinese diaspora, but their variability and trends over time are unknown. We examined conditional sex ratio (CSR) of girl births per 1000 boy births among second or third births following earlier daughters or sons in India, China, and their diaspora in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom (UK), and United States (US) drawing upon 18.4 million birth records from census and nationally representative surveys from 1999 to 2019. Among Indian women, the CSR in 2016 for second births following a first daughter favoured boys in India (866), similar to those in diaspora in Australia (888) and Canada (882). For third births following two earlier daughters in 2016, CSRs favoured sons in Canada (520) and Australia (653) even more than in India (769). Among women in China outside the one-child restriction, CSRs in 2015 for second order births somewhat favoured more girls after a first son (1154) but more heavily favoured boys after a first daughter (561). Third-birth CSRs generally fell over time among diaspora, except among Chinese diaspora in the UK and US. In the UK, third-birth CSRs fell among Indian but not among other South Asian diasporas. Selective abortion of girls is notable among Indian diaspora, particularly at higher-order births.

This article is based on an ethnographic study of pregnant couples\' embodied, emotional, and moral experiences of second-trimester selective abortion in Denmark. Drawing on 16 selective abortion stories, I unpack the intense, often highly accelerated, days that follow from the moment a fetal aberration is detected to the moment of fetal disposal or burial. I show that although prenatal screening and diagnostics have come to occupy a routinized part of pregnancy in Denmark, when women and their partners opt for termination, they are faced with a series of bodily events and actions they are entirely unprepared for while at the same time feeling essentially alone in grappling with the moral confusion that ensues. I argue that despite widespread medico-legal sanctioning and social endorsement of selective abortion, the specificities of how such terminations are done in Denmark in ambiguous, and conflicted, ways situate women and their partners in a series of moral tensions around how to relate to the abortion, the dead fetus, their grief, and their entitlement to such mourning. By chronicling the core struggles that the process of termination catalyzes, I point to the social and moral ramifications of the embodied practices and medico-legal choreographing of selective abortion in Denmark. [selective abortion, moral tensions, embodied practices, responsibility, death].

A key question in disability studies, philosophy, and bioethics concerns the relationship between disability and well-being. The mere difference view, endorsed by Elizabeth Barnes, claims that physical and sensory disabilities by themselves do not make a person worse off overall-any negative impacts on welfare are due to social injustice. This article argues that Barnes\'s Value Neutral Model does not extend to intellectual disability. Intellectual disability is (1) intrinsically bad-by itself it makes a person worse off, apart from a non-accommodating environment; (2) universally bad-it lowers quality of life for every intellectually disabled person; and (3) globally bad-it reduces a person\'s overall well-being. While people with intellectual disabilities are functionally disadvantaged, this does not imply that they are morally inferior-lower quality of life does not mean lesser moral status. No clinical implications concerning disability-based selective abortion, denial of life-saving treatment, or rationing of scarce resources follow from the claim that intellectual disability is bad difference.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate emotional distress and prenatal attachment throughout a subsequent pregnancy after Termination of Pregnancy (TOP) for fetal abnormality.
METHODS: Observational study, in a French Tertiary Maternity.
METHODS: 25 women in a subsequent pregnancy after a medical termination of pregnancy for foetal abnormality, 18-year-old and older. Prenatal Interviews at 20 Gestationnal weeks (GW), 27 GW and 35 GW and Postnatal at 3 months and at each time self-administered questionnaires of anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PCLS) depressive symptoms (EPDS), prenatal attachment (PAI) and Perinatal Grief Scale (PGS).
RESULTS: Pregnancy onset, i.e. before 20 GW, showed increased prevalence of anxiety (16/23, 66.7%), depression (7/23, 30.4%) and post-traumatic stress symptoms (4/16, 25%). Total score on PGS is higher in onset of pregnancy than in the third trimester (p = 0.005). Prenatal attachment was lower during early pregnancy (p = 0.003) and correlated inversely with grief intensity (p = 0.022). During late pregnancy, emotional symptoms decrease, and prenatal attachment stopped increase positively, specifically among women whose foetal abnormality in previous pregnancies were diagnosed late, at an average of 25 GW.
CONCLUSIONS: This research shows the specific dynamics of pregnancies following TOP and highlights the necessity for early prenatal psychological support. One should also pay special attention to prenatal attachment during late pregnancy even after knowing that the fetus is healthy.

Recent demographic analysis of sex ratios at birth in the UK has signaled the issue of \"missing girls\" in British Asian minority populations. This paper juxtaposes the processes of reproductive regulation set in motion by this new demographic knowledge of son preference, with lived experiences of gender equality and family-making practices. Ethnographic research conducted with British Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi families reveal diverse mechanisms of family decision-making that add to and nuance the prevailing statistics. We use the lens of \"gender equality\" and vernacular framings of sex-selective abortion to advance conceptual understandings of son preference as increasingly disconnected from selective reproduction, at the same time as selective reproduction is connected with the governance of ethnic minority identity and reproduction.

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The use of new technologies in the routine diagnosis of constitutional abnormalities, such as high-resolution chromosomal microarray and next-generation sequencing, has unmasked new mechanisms for generating structural variation of the human genome. For example, complex chromosome rearrangements can originate by a chromosome catastrophe phenomenon in which numerous genomic rearrangements are apparently acquired in a single catastrophic event. This phenomenon is named chromoanagenesis (from the Greek \"chromo\" for chromosome and \"anagenesis\" for rebirth). Herein, we report 2 cases of genomic chaos detected at prenatal diagnosis. The terms \"chromothripsis\" and \"chromoanasynthesis\" and the challenge of genetic counseling are discussed.