Kathmandu, March 7 -- Public health expert Aruna Uprety was flying from Dolpo to Nepalganj a few years ago when she struck up a conversation with a pregnant woman who told her she was travelling to the city for a doctor's appointment.

Uprety's initial happiness at learning that rural women were actively seeking prenatal care turned into shock when the woman, who had two daughters, said she would terminate her pregnancy if the ultrasound showed a female foetus.

When Uprety recounted her conversation with nurses at a hospital in Nepalganj, they did not bat an eyelid, telling her that pregnant people came from all over the Karnali to get ultrasounds for sex-selective abortions.

This example, multiplied tens of thousands of times every ...