Boy or girl? (Image: John Fedele/Getty)

WOULD it champion gender equality, or undermine a woman’s right to choose? A ban on abortions based on the sex of the fetus will be considered by the UK parliament this week.

Supporters of a ban say that women from some ethnic minorities occasionally abort female fetuses and try instead for a son. Yet others say any such ban cannot be enforced and could damage hard-won abortion rights enshrined in UK law since 1967. “Gender selection is a horrible concept and it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction,” says Tracey Masters of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. “But this [ban] would interfere with clinical care.”

Sex-based abortions are a grey area of UK law. After a newspaper covertly filmed three doctors agreeing to arrange one, the health secretary stated that such abortions are illegal. But the doctors were not prosecuted because, according to legal advice, abortion in these circumstances is not necessarily unlawful.


It’s hard to know how many terminations based on gender are taking place. About 98 per cent of UK abortions are on the grounds of risk to mental health – in effect, saying that having the baby would cause stress and anxiety. Some might argue that having an unwanted girl would fit into this category too, although the number of abortions carried out for this specific reason is not recorded.

Sex ratios give some insight. In some parts of China and India these are severely skewed in favour of boys. There is no such distortion for the UK as a whole, but one study that broke down births by ethnic group suggests that Indian-born mothers are more likely than usual to have a boy if they already have two or more girls, with the ratio for children born third or later reaching 115 boys for every 100 girls. This could be the result of gender-based abortions.

If so, it is happening because women are pressured by their families, says Jasvinder Sanghera of Karma Nirvana, a charity that campaigns against forced marriage. Some hospitals in areas with high South Asian populations won’t reveal the baby’s sex at the 20-week scan for this reason, she says.

And gender-based abortions could become more common with the recent arrival of sex tests that can be done at two months, using fetal DNA in the mother’s blood. At this early stage drugs can be used to abort the pregnancy, avoiding surgery.

But changing the law would set a harmful precedent, according to Genetic Alliance UK and Antenatal Results & Choices, both of which advise families with serious inherited conditions. “For the first time it would set on statute that doctors must prioritise a characteristic of the fetus over the well-being of the woman,” the two groups said in a statement to members of parliament last week. Some parents opt for sex-based abortions to reduce the risk their next child will be affected by an inherited condition.

Ultimately, though, any new law would be impossible to police because women having an abortion could simply lie about their motives. Sanghera argues that it would nevertheless send out a message about the equal value of girls.

But Masters says that doesn’t justify endangering women’s access to abortion. “If you start to give reasons that are not OK, it implies that only some reasons are OK,” she says. “We must allow a woman and her doctor to make the decision without judgement from others. Our bottom line is that we have to trust our patients.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Campaigners split on proposed ban”