Some Indo-Canadians continue to use abortion as means of “sex selection” to ensure that more male children are born than female.

The Globe and Mail reports that a new study published Monday in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology Canada shows that the preference for boys is strongest with immigrants who come to Canada from the Punjabi region of India. Moreover, that preference does not change over time.

“It’s counter-intuitive,” said research scientist Marcelo Urquia, who headed up the study. “We know that the longer immigrants are in Canada, the more likely they are to align to the host country.”

But sex selection continues to be a cultural trait for many Indian immigrants. Women with two female children are most prone to have an abortion in the second trimester of their pregnancy, when they can first ascertain the sex of the fetus. This most recent study is the second phase of a research project initiated by Urquia, who found that 4,400 fewer female children were born to Indo-Canadian parents over 20 years than the statistical average should have allowed.

Urquia’s latest study shows that almost twice as many boys are being born to Indian immigrants than girls: or 192 male children for every 100 female. The average for everyone else around the world is 107 boys to 100 girls.

The difference comes from selective abortions as Urquia’s says nothing else can account for the gap.

Urquia says this distortion will remain the same without some form of intervention.

The preference for boys among many Indian immigrants reveals underlying gender inequities and will not change without intervention, Dr. Urquia said.

Amanpreet Brar, who studies medicine at the University of Toronto and was a participant in the study, says sex-selection abortion was a topic of open discussion in India’s Punjab province where she was raised. But she was perplexed that the practice continues unabated for Indian immigrants in Canada.

[dcquiz]

Brar came to Canada when she was 14 and says she recalls how Indian families celebrated the birth of a boy but “it was rare to hear about a girl’s birth being celebrated,” she said.

The study assessed a total of 46,834 births for Indian-born mothers who had up to three children in the Canadian province of Ontario between April, 1993, and March, 2014 and who had come to Canada between 1985 and 2012. If mothers were having their third child, and the first two children were female, their pregnancy resulted in a boy being born almost twice as often than it did a girl.

That discrepancy was greater if the mother’s spoke Punjabi: 240 boys to 100 girls.

Follow David on Twitter