The Role of Sexual Preference in Prenatal Care

In many asian countries particularly China and India but others as well there is a fairly strong preference for many families to have male children as opposed to female children. A study that I looked at in India actually found that mothers were more likely to visit anti-natal clinics and receive tetanus vaccinations when they knew they had male children. The sex selective prenatal care just in the use of tetanus vaccinations or treatments alone explained about four to ten percent of the excess female uh neonatal mortality in India, he says.