China acts to correct gender imbalance

It was inevitable that China's one-child policy would lead to a gender imbalance:

Traditionally, sons have been more valued as a way for the family name to continue and as a means for parents to be cared for as they get older.

Government figures show 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls — a gap blamed largely on parents aborting baby girls to try again for a boy under the country's one-child policy.

The government recognizes this as a looming demographic disaster, but instead of revisiting the one-child policy, they have opted to outlaw gender-selection abortions.

I'm not sure how this will be enforced -- for example, there are other legitimate reasons for prenatal gender detection, and sympathetic doctors may be willing to help families come up with alternate justifications for their abortions -- but I do think that the law is a tiny step in the right direction.