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 UK, 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 it 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 Department of Health and Social Care 2023 report on sex ratios at birth, which suggested that approximately 400 sex-selective abortions have taken place of female foetuses 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 foetuses of Indian ethnicity, after two or more previous children, in England and Wales over the five-year period from 2017 to 2021”.
Due to the small number of births within many ethnic minority communities analysed, 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 UK, 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 UK.
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 UK.
Countries with a sex-selective abortion problem which have migrant populations in the UK, where sex-selective abortions may be happening but where the approach taken by this report is likely not 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, 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 seven weeks’ gestation.
Pro-abortion campaigners have repeatedly stated there is no evidence that sex-selective abortions are happening in the UK, even after the Department of Health’s findings released in 2023 indicating there were around 400 such cases in the UK.
In June 2025, Stella Creasy MP said in Parliament that sex-selective abortion was a “trope” and added that “nobody can prove that abortion for sex selection reasons has happened”.
In May of the same year, she told Glamour magazine that “Parliament ordered a national investigation into claims that ‘sex selection’ was happening, only for it to show there was no evidence of this at all”.
In July 2024, BPAS, with 24 other organisations, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said in a Parliamentary briefing that “The UK Government has found no evidence that women from some cultural backgrounds are ending pregnancies if they are expecting a girl”.
A March 2025 report from the British Medical Association said that “ongoing analysis of gender ratios in Britain have repeatedly found ‘no evidence for gender-selective abortions occurring in Great Britain’”.
The previous Government produced sex-ratio-at-birth reports every year from 2016 to 2023, with the most recent report being published under the Conservative Government in October 2023 (this being the report that showed the 400 missing girls). These reports have routinely been released in October or November.
However, since the current Labour Government came into power in July 2024, it has not published the reports that were expected to be published in October or November 2024 and October or November 2025. The Labour Government has made no commitment as to when it will release the data.
The previous Conservative Government apparently had no difficulties publishing these reports on time, and the data they report on is already delayed by two years with each report.
The Government is required to produce these reports every year following an amendment to the Serious Crime Act 2015, which became section 84 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, and required the Government to investigate the issue; one of the outcomes of that investigation is that it committed to produce the sex-ratio reports each year.
There is a growing body of evidence that sex-selective abortions are already occurring in the UK. A 2018 BBC investigation revealed evidence that new non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT) were being used on a widespread basis to determine the sex of babies early in pregnancy and that some women are coming under intense pressure to undergo sex-selective abortions.
Evidence was strong enough for the Labour Party to call for a ban on using NIPT for determining the baby’s sex in 2018, as a preference for boys in some cultures and the concept of “family balancing” may have led to an increase in the numbers of abortions of baby girls.
Also in 2018, Sky News reported fears that “The [NIPT] test can lead to the termination of baby girls due to a preference for boys in some cultures”, and, as Labour MP Naz Shah stated, could force expectant mothers and fathers to adopt methods such as NIPT “to live up to expectations of family members”. She further told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that “NIPT screenings should be used for their intended purpose, to screen for serious conditions such as Down’s syndrome … The government needs to look into this exploitative practice and enforce appropriate restrictions”.
A 2017 report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a government advisory body, concluded that there was a “real possibility that permitting NIPT for sex determination in the UK may be encouraging sex selection”. In its view, the risk was high enough to justify calling for a restriction on NIPT.
The report also found several websites offering baby gender tests for about £170, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics warned that the increasingly widespread private NIPT testing in the UK could lead to the country becoming a haven for “sex-selective” abortions.
A 2015 Department of Health report on sex-selective abortion detailed the personal testimonies of women who had been coerced into obtaining a sex-selective abortion in the UK by their partner or family.
In its evidence submitted to the Government, Jeena International, a charity supporting women from ethnic minority communities in the UK, notes how one woman, “A”, “undertook the decision to have an abortion based on gender, not because of domestic violence or duress by any of her in-laws or husband, but for various complex cultural reasons both self-imposed and community-imposed. She thought by giving birth to a boy she would be accepted into the family, she would therefore have a status … A registered at an ante-natal clinic and attended all appointments. When she was 18 or 19 weeks and went for a private scan at Harley Street, as a result of the scan that she was expecting a girl. The next day A booked an appointment to have an abortion, she told a doctor it was because she could not afford to have a baby. The ante-natal clinic called to chase her missed appointment. A informed them that she had miscarried when she was on holiday. A at the age of 29 was again expecting however this time twins. She then repeated the cycle of aborting on the basis of gender”.
Read the original version of this article here. This article was originally published by Right To Life UK and is republished with permission.
