Advertisements for ultrasound clinics that appear in Canadian Punjabi newspapers are promoting the abortion of female fetuses, charges the head of an immigrant society in Surrey.

Charan Gill, of the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society, fought against ads for ultrasound clinics in community newspapers 15 years ago.

Now Gill is shocked that ads for ultrasound clinics are running in two Punjabi-language newspapers, the Ajit Weekly, based in Mississauga, Ont., and with a B.C. edition, and the Hamdard Weekly, published weekly from Toronto, New York, Vancouver and California, and the Indian city of Chandigarh.

The papers are distributed across Canada.

One ad provides B.C. phone numbers, including a line for Punjabi speakers, for anyone wanting to make appointments at Koala Labs, an ultrasound clinic in Blaine, Wash.

It reads, "You are told the sex immediately."

"It's really, really sad that some newspapers, for sake of money, are misleading the public. The end result is they will tell the sex of the baby so that people that don't want baby girls can abort it," said Gill on Wednesday in Surrey.

No proof of ads' effects: clinic head

Dr. Stephen Jones, who runs the Koala clinic in Washington, said there's no proof of how couples are using ultrasound data.

But an Ottawa-based family rights group says statistics suggest abortions targeting female fetuses are happening in B.C.'s Indo-Canadian community.

Andrea Mrozek, of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, says a study last year shows an unnatural boy-girl ratio in Surrey where many Lower Mainland Indo-Canadian families live.

"We found gender imbalance between boys and girls looking at census data going back to as early as 1990," said Mrozek, the institute's manager of research and communications.

There were deviations in Surrey's boy-girl ratios, with 108 boys to 100 girls, Mrozek said.

Sex selection is a factor, said Mrozek, who believes female abortions explain why.

More statistics on abortions need to be made public so that the issue can be studied further, she said.

"Canadians need to step up to the plate and clarify that that's not an acceptable reason to abort a fetus."