The fury over sex-selective abortion in Britain

In December, it was reported in Britain that government research found that Indian parents who want boys could be using abortions or IVF to avoid having girls.

Analysis by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) found there was a “statistically significant imbalance” in the ratio of boy to girl births between 2017 and 2021 for children of Indian ethnicity.

“This may indicate that sex-selective abortions are taking place,” the report stated. “If so, it is estimated that approximately 400 sex-selective abortions may have taken place to female foetuses over the five-year period from 2017 to 2021.”

More evidence of sex selection among Indian-born mothers was also supported by a study, backed by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and led by Prof Sylvie Dubuc, of Strasbourg University. It concluded that sex selection remained confined to fewer than five per cent of Indian-born mothers at the peak period of 1990 to 2005 and reduced in 2006 to 2018.

The issue of sex selective abortions in the UK has been flagged for some time. A quick internet search will produce articles on the topic dating from a decade ago and more. In the first week of the New Year, the issue is back in the headlines, after BPAS – Britain’s biggest abortion provider – more or less said in no uncertain terms: We do, actually, tolerate sex selective abortions.

I’m not making this up, unfortunately. BPAS says on its website: “The law is silent on the matter. Reason of foetal sex is not a specified ground for abortion within the Abortion Act, but nor is it specifically prohibited.”

This advice clearly contradicts the Department of Health’s own guidance, issued to doctors in 2014. It states: “Abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal. Gender is not itself a lawful ground under the Abortion Act.”

The Department of Health and Social Care, in response to a request for comment from the Telegraph newspaper in December, said through a spokesperson: “This Government’s position is unequivocal: sex-selective abortion is illegal in England and Wales and will not be tolerated. Sex is not a lawful ground for termination of pregnancy, and it is a criminal offence for any practitioner to carry out an abortion for that reason alone.”

“Anyone with evidence that this illegal practice is occurring must report it to the police immediately. We continue to work closely with providers to ensure that abortions are only performed in accordance with the strict legal grounds set out in the Abortion Act,” the spokesperson added.

It’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that BPAS’s advice is blatantly irresponsible when the latest figures show that women of Indian origin in Britain are likely to have aborted 400 girls on the basis of their sex from the years 2016-2021.

If anything, the last thing BPAS is doing is trying to discourage abortions based purely on a baby’s sex.

The picture is much broader than just the UK, where the scale of the issue is likely masked by a societal panic not to be seen as racist.

But the truth is that over 160 million females are “missing” from the population in Asia, where the high number of sex-selective abortions has tipped the gender balance drastically.

Back in 2020, researchers estimated that 6.8 fewer female births will be recorded across India by 2030 because of the persistent use of selective abortions.

Researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia were behind the data, projecting the sex ratio at birth in 29 Indian states and union territories.

Academics found that a cultural preference for a son was found to be highest in 17 states in the north of the country.

The most populous state in the region, Uttar Pradesh, showed the highest deficit in female births – prompting an estimation that the cumulative number of missing female births in the state would hit 2 million between 2017 and 2030.

In her book, Unnatural Selection, Beijing-based correspondent Mara Hvistendahl looked at how easy access to prenatal sex selective technology – ultrasound – was allowing for fetal sex identification.

In countries where abortion was readily available, she writes that this was resulting in female feticide on a massive scale. Highly skewed sex ratios at birth, Hvistendahl writes, were first reported back in the late 1980s in South Korea, with China soon following.

She wrote, fifteen years ago, that the rich urban elite may have been the first to access sex selection, however with the advent of ultrasound technology, it soon became widely available even to the poor.

South Korea, China, India and Taiwan were the first countries to be affected, but the problem would spread further afield to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

There are then the cultural outcomes which follow from a large excess of males. To understand the scale of the problem firstly, Hvistendahl writes that in human populations, around 105 boys are born for every 100 girls.

If the sex ratio at birth is more than 107, it must therefore be a result of manipulation, via prenatal sex selection. She points to China, with a sex ratio at birth of 118, and India with a ratio of 108.

Wide variations across the two countries, most notably the two biggest in Asia, ultimately means that in some localities, the sex ratio at birth rises to as high as 150.

Looking at the consequences of such huge imbalances, the book then talks about how a large excess of males in the population means trafficking for marriage, a rise in prostitution, men who are unable to marry because there aren’t enough women, and the societal impacts spanning from crime to security.

As well as the creation of a whole class of anti-social, disenchanted men, it has been documented that sex-selective abortion also leads to more violence against women and girls.

That case has at least been well-argued by feminist geographer Joni Seager in her book, Women’Atlas, where she talks about the drastic restructuring of societies in countries including China, Pakistan, South Korea and India.

An indication that the problem of sex-selection is growing was also indicated in 2018 data that shows that over 20 countries have documented sex imbalances in their populations.

The United Nations acknowledged the problem in a report published in 2012, which noted that the masculinization of demographic trends “has serious social and economic implications” and is “not a natural phenomenon but is achieved through a deliberate elimination of girls.”

The truth is that sex-selective abortion needs to be explicitly banned. At least we are talking about it, and politicians are starting to speak up, including Senior Tory peer Baroness Eaton who told The Mail:

“This is a great tragedy to which society must not turn a blind eye. Parliament needs to change the law to ensure there is an explicit prohibition on sex-selective abortions, protecting both baby girls and women at risk of being coerced into abortions.”

If there is no action, Britain will only drift further towards the nightmarish dystopia seen in Asian countries resulting from the practice. There is already strong support for an explicit legal ban: a poll of more than 2,000 British adults conducted by Savanta ComRess found that 89 per cent of the public support a clear ban, with the figure increasing to 91 per cent of women.

Action has been taken before. Such was the severity of the problem that in 1988, in an effort to discourage sex selective abortion, South Korea implemented a law making it illegal for a doctor to reveal the sex of the unborn baby to prospective parents.

This was accompanied by public awareness campaigns from the government using the slogan: “One daughter raised well is equal to 10 sons” – it remains the only country that has been able to overturn the sex disparity in the past 30 years.

In light of this, it is ludicrous that a taxpayer funded organisation like BPAS – which last year netted an income of £64 million (of which £63 million came from the NHS) – simply shrugs its shoulders and openly says it’s not illegal for women to abort their children because they are girls.

Those in the Indian community have openly expressed to the media that such abortions are happening, including Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, a campaigner against forced marriages, who said one reason is because of the practice of dowry, which means girls are an immediate financial burden.

“Health professionals need to stop turning a blind eye because of cultural sensitivities or the fear of being accused of racism,” she said. I suspect that’s why MPs shamefully previously rejected a Bill to ban sex-selective abortion.

The reignited fury over sex-selective abortion is justified, and long may it last until something changes.

  

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Maria Maynes

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This article was first published on Gript and is printed here with permission

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