Study shows girls increasingly aborted in India

A new study shows that an increasing number of Indian families with one girl are aborting pregnancies when prenatal tests reveal another female.

The study to be published in the medical journal Lancet on Tuesday says the decline in the numbers of girls is larger in richer and better educated households. It says a 1996 law that bans revealing the gender of a fetus has been largely ineffective.

Raw data from India's most recent census released in March showed 914 girls under age 6 for every 1,000 boys. A decade ago, many were horrified when the ratio was 927 to 1,000.

The study says that selective abortions of girls are estimated at between 4 and 12 million between 1980 to 2010.

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