The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has been criticised for legitimising sex-selective abortion in Great Britain.

BPAS is the largest abortion provider in the UK, and states on its website that sex-selective abortion is not illegal as long as one of the grounds of the Abortion Act is met, such as an impact on the mother’s mental health, as “the law is silent on the matter”. In the next sentence, it mentions that other “’good’ reasons” for abortion are not specified, such as in the case of rape.

In December, a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) report found a “statistically significant imbalance” in the ratio of boys and girls born to Indian parents in Britain. It estimated that approximately 400 baby girls may have been sex-selectively aborted between 2017 and 2021.

Criminal offence

Guidance from the Department of Health in 2014 explains: “Abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal. Gender is not itself a lawful ground under the Abortion Act.”

Following the December report, a spokesman from the DHSC reiterated: “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.” He urged anyone with evidence of this occurring to “report it to the police immediately”.

Right to Life UK spokeswoman Catherine Robinson labelled BPAS “irresponsible” for its advice which “risks normalising sex-selective terminations”.

She called for the Government to stop funding BPAS and to “urgently update legislation to introduce an explicit ban on sex-selective abortion”.

Disturbing problem

Baroness Eaton has tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill which is currently progressing through the House of Lords to explicitly outlaw sex-selective abortion.

She noted: “The Government’s own data suggests that there are hundreds of missing baby girls as a result of sex-selective abortion taking place right here in the UK”.

The Peer warned that this “disturbing problem could get much worse if the abortion clause in the Crime and Policing Bill becomes law”, explaining that the amendment to decriminalise women who have abortions at any stage of pregnancy could increase the possibility of women performing their own sex-selective abortions at home.