Aborting a baby because of its gender is a repugnant practice that should make any mother recoil – but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking the women who do this are making choices of their own free will.
Weighing heavy upon them is the expectation and judgment of their families and the wider community, and they may even live in fear of their husbands divorcing them – or worse. So it beggars belief that any official body would want to facilitate such a corrosive custom as this.
The culpability of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service is in black and white. By saying on its website that the ‘law is silent on the matter’ of sex-selective abortions, it is gaslighting vulnerable women who seek its services.
Let me be clear, it is not legal. Nor should it be. It has no place in modern society – and that goes for everyone, regardless of what customs they observe.
As Department of Health figures bear out, gender-based abortions seem most common among communities with roots in the Indian subcontinent.
There, traditional society prizes boys above girls. Boys can work in better-paid jobs, through which they can grow a family’s influence and power.
Girls, on the other hand, are a social timebomb – in not behaving as patriarchal strictures dictate, a girl can bring shame to her parents, who will also face paying a burdensome dowry when they marry her off.
So if a family already has two daughters, a third in the womb might feel like one too many.
In Pakistan, where I grew up, my mother was riven with anxiety during her third pregnancy, knowing that her very worth was tied to the sex of the baby – having already had me and my sister.
When she finally gave birth to a son, my grandmother exclaimed with pride: ‘At last, my daughter has now become a part of society.’
It was shocking to realise how women could be dehumanised, their identities reduced to mere functions of reproduction.
But that was a generation ago. Sex-based abortions should be confined to the past, but they are strangely tolerated by officialdom. Why?
Because the lanyard class of medics, social workers and charity employees fear that in asking too many searching questions of anyone of a different culture they will be accused of racism.
We saw the same moral cowardice in those who ignored the pleas of young white girls who were at the mercy of Asian rape gangs.
That scandal was a painful reminder that we must uphold Western values, whatever the cost.
