Paul Keenan
Debate is raging over gender selective terminations, writes Paul Keenan
One year ago, The Irish Catholic reported on the phenomenon of gender selective abortion in Britain. It was a report built on the findings of a statistical investigation carried out by London’s Independent newspaper which found evidence from census figures to suggest that female births were skewed within certain ethnic minority communities in the country, notably those of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – countries where gender selective abortions are carried out to satisfy a cultural preference for sons.
A conclusion reached by statisticians poring over the figures was that, while thousands of female babies were indeed ‘missing’, women were either travelling to their home countries for gender selective abortions or finding doctors in Britain to perform such terminations.
With that latter point set to cause a stir in Britain then, this newspaper predicted that “legislators must face inevitable battles over calls for a tightening of abortion practices”.
That prediction came to pass in the final weeks of January this year, both in the courts and the Houses of Parliament where legislators raced to enact legislation before May’s general election to deal once and for all with the issue of terminations based solely on the gender of the foetus.
Legislators
The move on the part of legislators came on January 22 when MPs backed an amendment to the forthcoming Serious Crime Bill proposed by Conservative member Fiona Bruce. Said amendment, if passed, would state explicitly that gender selective abortion is illegal in the eyes of the law and that physicians offering the procedure would face prosecution.
In part, MPs have been prompted by something of a grey area around the country’s abortion regime as regulated by the 1967 Abortion Act. Drawn up in a decade in which the gender of a child in the womb could not be identified, the authors of the Act certainly did not have this element in mind in formulating the legislation.
As a result, gender selective abortion is not mentioned explicitly, leading pro-abortion advocates to argue that the law is either ‘silent’ on the matter or that the provisions for the mental health of a woman allow for gender selective termination as women from the very communities mentioned may be coming under undue mental pressure from husbands and family members to deal with ‘unacceptable females’.
Both the British Medical Association and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which carries out most NHS abortions, operate under the ‘silence’ of the Act.
But there is another equally serious reason for pro-life parliamentarians to act as they have done, and that is the fact that it can no longer be denied that gender selective abortions are taking place within Britain’s national boundaries.
On January 26, as a result of a long campaign by one pro-life advocate, Aisling Hubert, a magistrates court in Birmingham issued proceedings against Dr Palaniappan Rajmohan on the basis of his offering to terminate a foetus based solely on gender.
In video footage secretly gained in 2012 as part of an investigation by women acting on behalf of a national newspaper, and viewed by the court, Dr Rajmohan is not only seen offering the abortion, but also admitting that the act was akin to “female infanticide”.
A second physician filmed, Dr Prabha Sivaraman, was due to face court this week in Manchester in connection with her actions, footage of which shows her agreeing to a gender selective abortion as, she contends: “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination”.
But here is the point.
The prosecution of Dr Rajmohan, while historic since the commencement of the Abortion Act, is the result of a private prosecution taken by Hubert after the Crown Prosecution Service refused to proceed, despite the wealth of evidence.
The wording of that September 2013 decision stated: “Taking into account the need for professional judgment which deals firmly with wrongdoing, while not deterring other doctors from carrying out legitimate and medically justified abortions, we have concluded that the cases would be better dealt with by the GMC rather than by prosecution.”
Responsible
The GMC, the General Medical Council, is the overseeing body responsible for best practice among doctors. It has no powers of prosecution in matters pertaining to doctors.
Just months after the CPS ruling, The Independent would reveal its findings on ‘missing females’, and these, combined with the failed prosecutions prompted politicians to sit up and take note of the issue. Responding to a question in Parliament in March of 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron stated bluntly of gender selective abortion: “It is a simply appalling practice, and in areas such as that, such as female genital mutilation and such as forced marriage, we need to be absolutely clear about our values and the messages we send and about these practices being unacceptable.”
“The Government have made clear that abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal.”
The message was echoed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in May when he introduced new guidelines on abortion to reinforce government assertions that terminations based on gender are illegal.
And that, apparently, was that.
Except it wasn’t, and the organisations and parties involved continued within the grey area as before until, in November, a group of 11 female MPs, led by Fiona Bruce moved for explicit and binding clarification in law, introducing the Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill to the House towards outlawing gender selection in terminations.
Prosecuted
Notably, that same month, the organisation Christian Concern released survey results to show that 80% of Britons agreed that “where it can be proved that an abortion was authorised on grounds of the baby’s gender, the doctor authorising that abortion should be prosecuted”.
Ten days before the release of the survey results, Aisling Hubert began her fight for a private prosecution against Drs Rajmohan and Sivaraman.
The response to Sex Selection Bill was overwhelming, passed for its second reading by 181 votes to one, a record for the House.
Ironically, the current British government is not vocally supporting Fiona Bruce’s actions, not because it believes that gender selection in terminations is wrong – Mr Cameron has made his position clear – but because figures around the level of gender selection have themselves been challenged so as to undermine the scale of the problem to be faced in the minds of some Westminster legislators.
Therefore, for now, it is through ‘solo runs’ by MPs such as Ms Bruce and determined action such as that undertaken by Ms Hubert that the issue of gender selection is kept in the public arena.
Battles have been won, but the war goes on.