As evidence emerges
suggesting approximately 400 sex-selective abortions of baby girls happened
between 2017 and 2021, Britain’s largest abortion provider continues to claim
the practice is not illegal, despite a government confirmation to the contrary.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which in the last financial year performed over 110,000 abortions in the U.K., claims on its website that sex-selective abortions are not illegal, sparking wide condemnation.
On its website, BPAS claims “The law is silent on the [sex-selective abortion] matter. Reason of fetal sex is not a specified ground for abortion within the Abortion Act, but nor is it specifically prohibited.”
This directly contradicts a statement from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in response to these revelations. “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.”
The DHSC’s position on sex-selective abortion has been explicit since 2014, when they issued guidance saying, “Abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal. Gender is not itself a lawful ground under the Abortion Act.”
Despite the government’s position, a BPAS spokesperson doubled down on their view that sex-selective abortion is not illegal, insisting “there are instances” where abortion on the grounds of the sex of the unborn baby may be justified.
BPAS’s statement on sex-selective abortion follows revelations from a DHSC 2023 report of sex ratios at birth, which suggested that approximately 400 sex-selective abortions have taken place of female fetuses of Indian ethnicity between 2017 and 2021.
The report explains that where the ratio of males to females for a particular ethnicity or mother’s country of birth is greater than 107 males born for every 100 females born, “this may indicate that people in this group have been involved in sex selective abortions.”
The 2023 report conducted an analysis of birth sex ratios by the ethnicity of the child for England and Wales, both for overall birth sex ratio and by birth order, and found the “birth sex ratio for children of Indian ethnicity of the birth order 3 or more was 113 and found to be significantly higher than 107.”
This disparity in sex ratio at birth was used to draw the conclusion that “there may have been approximately 400 sex selective abortions to female fetuses of Indian ethnicity, after 2 or more previous children, in England and Wales over the 5 year period from 2017 to 2021.”
Due to the small number of births within many ethnic minority communities analyzed, even a large imbalance in sex ratios at birth for a particular minority community may not be identified as statistically significant using the approach taken by this report, meaning sex-selective abortions could be happening in a number of these minority communities in the U.K., but are not being detected by the statistical approach taken to produce the report. This suggests the 2023 report, which found evidence of approximately 400 sex-selective abortions, may be underestimating the true number of sex-selective abortions in the U.K.
The report itself illustrates this limitation, stating that for 100 births, there would need to be a sex ratio of about 149 boys per 100 girls before it is flagged as significant; even with 5,000 births, you still need 112 boys per 100 girls. Furthermore, the report also outlines that, because of this limitation, 80 countries with fewer than 100 births were excluded entirely. The absence of a statistically significant finding elsewhere is not the same as proof that sex selection is not happening within other ethnic minority communities in the U.K.
Countries with a sex-selective abortion problem which have migrant populations in the U.K., where sex-selective abortions may be happening but where the approach taken by this report is likely to not be able to detect them, include Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Albania, Nepal, Vietnam, South Korea, Armenia, Georgia, Taiwan, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, and Montenegro.
On the NHS (Britain’s nationalized health care system), it is not possible for mothers to find out the sex of their baby until 18 weeks. However, the report outlines that it is now possible to identify fetal sex through NIPT testing in private clinics after just 7 weeks gestation.
Even though the Government has said that sex-selective abortion is illegal, the U.K.’s largest abortion provider, BPAS, which receives the vast majority of its funding from the Government, is telling women that sex-selective abortion is not illegal. This is a shocking contradiction in values from the Government.
The Government must act without delay to cut all funding it provides to BPAS, urgently update legislation to introduce an explicit ban on sex-selective abortion, and must not pursue further changes to legislation, such as those proposed in Scotland, that would likely make this problem much worse.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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