Some Israeli women are taking advantage of liberal abortion laws to sex-select their babies. An article in the latest issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal analysed statistics which suggest that many women who ask for prenatal tests for Down Syndrome really want to know the sex of their child. If the child is of the wrong sex, they abort it.

This is illegal in Israel whose law does not permit the abortion of healthy children. Dr Morechai Halperin, an ethicist at the health ministry said that he was shocked. "Killing healthy foetuses because families have 'too many' of that sex is immoral, violates universal ethics and indicates moral decline. And public money used for performing [prenatal tests] in these cases could otherwise have been used to treat cancer patients, for example."