In a region where female infanticide is still reality, South Korea’s highest court ruled that parents have the right to know the sex of their unborn babies.

On Thursday, the South Korean Constitutional Court overturned a law prohibiting doctors from informing parents of the sex of the foetus, which it said was “out of step with social changes” and in breach of the rights of medical workers, AP reported. The country had initiated an awareness campaign called “Love Your Daughter”, which they believe has curbed the trend of aborting females.

A ban on revealing the sex of the unborn baby is still prevalent in China and India, where families traditionally preferred a boy child who would inherit and carry on the family name. Societies that practice sex selection in favor of males are quite common in Asia, especially in The People’s Republic of China, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and New Guinea.

It also said the preference for sons has lessened to a point where the ratio of newly born boys and girls in the country has almost reached the natural level of 100 girls to 106 boys.

“The legislation’s purpose is recognized in that it helps resolve the sex-ratio imbalance and protects the fetuses’ right to life,” the court said in the ruling. “But it overly limits the basic rights of parents and physicians by placing a blanket ban through the latter half of pregnancy.”

In 2005, 90 million women were estimated to be missing in seven Asian countries alone due, apparently, to prenatal sex selective abortion. However, other reasons for the sex ratio imbalance in certain countries have been proposed. The existence of the practice appears to be determined by culture, rather than by economic conditions, because such deviations in sex ratios do not exist in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Sex-selective abortion was rare before the late 20th century because of the difficulty of determining the sex of the fetus before birth, but ultrasound has made such selection easier.

Female deselection is common in China and India, where tradition says that most parents want their first child to be born a male. Female deselection is also due to deeply rooted Confucian and Hindu traditions, in which Chinese and Indian parents desire sons in order to make familial propagation, security for the elderly, labor provision, and performance of ancestral and familial rites. China calls the female deselection situation the “missing girl” problem.

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