Campaign group Right To Life UK has said that 400 girls are “missing” within the country attributable to sex-selective abortions.
It follows criticism of recommendation from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) suggesting that sex-selective abortions are illegal.
According to the Department of Health and Social Care “Sex-selective abortion is prohibited in England and Wales and won’t be tolerated,” and “sex isn’t a lawful ground for termination of pregnancy.”
However, groups resembling BPAS, the UK’s largest abortion provider, and the British Medical Association (BMA) have argued that the 1967 Abortion Act doesn’t explicitly ban sex-selective abortion and that if other grounds are legitimately met (resembling the impact on mental health) then an abortion through which sex preference is an element can proceed.
Right To Life UK pointed to government statistics which suggest that sex-selective abortions could also be going down in Britain, particularly throughout the Indian community.
An evaluation of statistics from 2017 to 2021 found “evidence of a statistically significant imbalance within the ratio of males to females at birth for youngsters of Indian ethnicity after 2 or more previous births, in England and Wales … This may indicate that sex selective abortions are going down”.
The government report added, “If so, it’s estimated that roughly 400 sex selective abortions could have taken place to female foetuses over the 5 12 months period from 2017 to 2021. No other evidence suggesting sex selective abortions occurring within the United Kingdom over the period 2017 to 2021 has been present in this evaluation.”
Catherine Robinson, Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, said, “It’s irresponsible for BPAS to publish advice suggesting that sex-selective abortion isn’t illegal, since it risks normalising sex-selective abortion and is probably going encouraging abortions sought purely due to a baby’s sex.”
Robinson warned that girls facing pressure from relations to terminate a baby girl may find it harder to withstand such demands.
She added that it was illogical for the federal government to say that sex-selective abortions are illegal while concurrently pumping tens of thousands and thousands of kilos into BPAS.
“The Government must act directly to chop all funding it provides to BPAS, urgently update laws to introduce an explicit ban on sex-selective abortion, and must not pursue further changes to laws, resembling those proposed in Scotland, that may likely make this problem much worse,” she said.
 Campaign group Right To Life UK has said that 400 girls are “missing” within the country attributable to sex-selective abortions. It follows criticism...){kind=link}