Pregnancy in Armenia: Let’s Hope it’s Not a Girl

According to Ani Jilozian, an activist with the Women’s Support Centre in Yerevan, this is mainly due to three related factors. The first is the preference for male children derived from the family structure in which girls and women have marginal social and economic roles and subsequently have fewer rights. Sons are a security for every family as they are tasked with looking after their parents and helping them in their old age. Whereas once the daughters are married they usually go to live with the husband’s family. A second factor is the development of technology which allows parents to know the sex of a child before birth. Finally, the low birth rate in Armenia (where each woman gives birth to 1.7 children), reduces the probability of having a male child in a small family, thus increasing the necessity for selecting the sex.

Although a statistical evaluation by UNFPA Armenia in 2012 shows that 70 percent of abortion cases were chosen by women, they were not always in a position to freely make this decision. According to a qualitative study done by Jilozian and based on a series of interviews with women who used selective abortions, the majority of women interviewed, also claiming to have originally chosen to have selective abortions, later admitted to doing so because of strong pressure from husband or family to have a male child. Sometimes it is the husband who makes the decision for his wife, often resorting to psychological pressure.

According to Armenian law, a woman can have an abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy, a period when it is impossible to tell the sex of the child, which shows that most of the selective abortions are both illegal and dangerous. Only 57 percent of women are aware that this process is illegal and that it entails high risks for their health.

Recently the Armenian government introduced a new law to combat the selective abortions. Before having an abortion, a woman must consult with her doctor and then wait three days before receiving authorization for the procedure. According to the government this law should help to raise awareness among the women to the risks involved and to allow them to make better choices.

However as Jilozian explains, this law is inadequate as it limits a woman’s reproductive freedom and puts her health at risk. Making selective abortions illegal is not an effective solution to the problem. It does not remove the main reasons behind the gender preference which are deeply seated in Armenian patriarchal society. The attempt to limit access to abortion without facing the main cause for the preference of the sex is likely to increase the demand for illegal and unsafe abortions, especially in women from marginalized communities.

Even though selective abortions have slightly decreased in recent years, some predictions foresee that if this issue is not properly addressed, by 2060 the country will experience a deficit of women of about 93,000, or rather 3 percent of the present population. This would consequently cause a migration of a part of the male population who would look for a partner outside of the country, thus putting the demographic equilibrium at risk.