The problem of “missing girls” persists in parts of the world where families prize sons over daughters. Technology, in many cases, worsens the problem. Widely available ultrasound equipment, which makes it easy to detect the sex of a fetus, allows people to circumvent legal bans on sex-selective abortion. “Doctors or technicians can make hints without saying a word,” says Sonya Davey, CEO of Ultrasafe Ultrasound.

Her organization—a startup founded by an international team of college students—offers a technical solution to a problem that technology has exacerbated. Software developed by Ultrasafe Ultrasound blurs the part of a live ultrasound image that would otherwise show the genitalia of a fetus. In that way, the product prevents users from offering even a hint about fetal sex. Judges for the 2013 Dell Social Innovation Challenge named it a Top 10 Outstanding Innovation Project.

Field-testing is the next step for Ultrasafe Ultrasound. Davey is seeking an NGO partner to test the software in rural areas of India. She aims to complete that process in 2014 and then to bring the product to market by 2015. Potential customers include doctors, hospital chains, and manufacturers of ultrasound equipment. Each of those groups, Davey believes, has an incentive to buy and install the software in order to limit the risk of criminal prosecution. In some countries, including India, it’s illegal to disclose the sex of a fetus.

Davey is careful not to blame equipment makers for the missing-girls phenomenon. The chief purpose of ultrasound technology, after all, is to enable a wide range of beneficial health screenings. “This is not the manufacturers’ fault,” Davey says. In fact, she sees an opportunity for companies that sell ultrasound equipment to become part of a solution to the problem of sex-selective abortion.

General Electric took steps in that direction in 2008, when it launched a campaign that aimed (in its words) to champion “the rights of the girl child.” The company now labels each ultrasound machine sold in India with a warning sticker that explains the law against fetal sex determination.

What if manufacturers decide to develop software solutions that compete with Ultrasafe Ultrasound? Davey would see that move as a win for her project. “We want to show that it’s viable and that this kind of product will decrease the rate of feticide,” she says. “We want manufacturers to move quickly.”

Davey, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, acknowledges that software alone won’t change entrenched attitudes about the value of girls. “If we sit around waiting for society to change, it may take another hundred years,” she says. Meanwhile, gender imbalance is worsening. The law that bars sex-selective abortion in India has been in place since 1994. Even so, census figures show little progress. In 2011, for every 1,000 male births in that country, there were 914 female births—down from 962 in 1981. (The data for China are similarly skewed.)

“We need to think seriously about what the world will be 20 or 30 years from now if vigorous steps are not taken to stop selective elimination of females from Indian society,” says Manisha Sharma, a visiting assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Sex-selective abortion remains a taboo subject. One day, a woman will be visibly pregnant; then, suddenly, she’s not. “People aren’t comfortable talking about it,” Sharma says. “It’s a mute conversation.” That kind of silence makes it hard to sort through the cultural complexities of the issue.

To understand the issue better, Sharma and Davey teamed up to interview a cross-section of Indians, ranging from government officials and health activists to village women and street sweepers. Sharma, to her surprise, found that few interview subjects seemed to appreciate the role that misuse of ultrasound equipment plays in the missing-girls phenomenon.

Outside India, meanwhile, other challenges loom. “As soon as you mention the word ‘abortion’ in the West, it becomes a classic abortion debate,” Sharma says. So she tries to avoid that word, and instead refers to “selective elimination of female fetuses” or “sex selection,” for example. “We can’t alienate any part of the population that might be important in coming to a solution,” she says.

Read more stories by Suzie Boss.