The Chinese government has dealt with more than 6,800 cases of illegal fetus gender tests and abortions in little more than one year, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) revealed on Monday.

In China, it is against the law not only for medical institutions or individual doctors to perform sex-selective abortions, but it is illegal to even determine the sex of a fetus, unless it is medically necessary.

Like Us on Facebook

State news agency Xinhua reports that The NHFPC, in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Security and other government departments, launched a nationwide crackdown on illegal medical practices in October, 2013. Since then, the government uncovered 41,000 violations by medical and family planning institutions.

Because Chinese traditional holds such a strong preference of male heirs over women, many women have chosen to have abortions after finding out that they pregnant with girls.

This has been exacerbated by China's one-child policy, which was instituted to slowdown the population growth explosion, but which also created an unintended black market for illegal medical procedures. However, this policy has been eased in recent years.

China's one-child policy, which was adopted in the late 1970s, has increasingly skewed the country's gender ratio heavily toward men since the 1980s, when ultrasound technology used for identifying the gender of fetuses first became available.

The NHFPC also said that 44,000 cases of unlicensed medical practices had been dealt with during the crackdown, with 1,373 transgressors having been detained by police. The NHFPC added that a lack of medical resources in some regions, particularly on the outskirts of cities, has pushed China's migrant population into unlicensed medical institutions.

TagsChina Investigates 6, 800 Illegal Gender Tests, Abortions in Crackdown, National Health and Family Planning Commission, sex-selective abortions, One Child Policy, gender test