British Indians still aborting baby girls in UK

I'm not suggesting which newspaper anyone should read, Oreo . They all have their biases. I'm suggesting that people should be more critical of what they read especially if they are repeating it on social media. I'm sorry if you find my posts boring but you don't have to read them.

Galaxy

I am sorry to hear that theworriedwell. Very different context but I was pressurised by my health visitor in the days after I gave birth ( it was around access to records about the birth) it is a deeply unsettling experience

It is, I suppose I dealt with it by thinking they meant well. The one that truly upset me was when I was pregnant at 38, I know never learn do I, and young doctor said I'd missed my amnio and we need to hurry up or it will be too late for an abortion. I told him I wasnt having it and wouldn't be having an abortion anyway. He was so abusive a midwife had to step in and shout at him to stop. I couldn't imagine he meant well. Whatever happened to a woman's right to choose.

foxie48

But it works, doesn't it? People read their newspaper and transfer the biased "news" to social media where it resonates with some people's stereotypical views and it is accepted as fact. I'm sure there are cases of the abortion of girls for the "wrong" reason's but there seems to be little evidence that it's widespread or on the increase and I'm sure perfectly healthy foetuses are aborted for all sorts of other reasons that many would find unacceptable.

This preoccupation with newspapers and bias and so on is getting boring now.
Which paper is acceptable I wonder? Just The Guardian?

Wyllow3

Indeed! the O/P states with no evidence whatsoever

apparently it is on the increase too

this is just cultural hate stirring. 😡

No it isn’t!
The facts are now being twisted to suit certain people’s agenda,
AKA ooh look a squirrel, nothing to see here.
This happens regularly on GN.
Strong preference for boy babies and disappointment with girl babies is rife in some cultures even to claiming abortions for this reason.
Thankfully this abhorrent practice is not the case in British culture and it’s to be hoped that as time goes on all ethnic minorities that do practice it, and we know of course that it isn’t all, who do but it’s a percentage nevertheless, will stop doing it.

But it works, doesn't it? People read their newspaper and transfer the biased "news" to social media where it resonates with some people's stereotypical views and it is accepted as fact. I'm sure there are cases of the abortion of girls for the "wrong" reason's but there seems to be little evidence that it's widespread or on the increase and I'm sure perfectly healthy foetuses are aborted for all sorts of other reasons that many would find unacceptable.

Indeed! the O/P states with no evidence whatsoever

apparently it is on the increase too

this is just cultural hate stirring. 😡

The "evidence" is based on an estimated 400 shortfall of female babies born over a five year period ending in 2021. In 2020 alone 60k babies were born to Asian minority group parents so any so called "evidence" is tenuous and completely unprovn. The article concerned the BPAS website's comment, which IMO is incorrect and should be amended but it has been distorted to make a point. There's currently little evidence of the widespread abortion of girls in the UK purely because of their gender.

Casdon

It’s much earlier than that, you can find out with accuracy now at 6-7 weeks if you use a private DNA test.

Yes, records show that this is mostly the case. (ie travels to India just at the "right time" or privately in the UK. Realistically, the latter can't be reliably traced unless you are going after a specific person.

There are numerous reasons people may want an early termination which have absolutely nothing to do with the baby's sex, and I really respect that. Like I said up thread, "every mother a willing mother, every child a wanted child".

No, it's not OK imo to do it just on gender basis, but it's not just practised by those mentioned in the O/P.

In Western culture some wealthier people who want a specific gender child go and have it done on the quiet, or select various genetic traits that increasingly can be tested.

This is an old article, but very pertinent.

www.theguardian.com/law/2012/feb/28/is-sex-selective-abortion-illegal

fancyflowers

Blinko

Henry VIII managed this issue in a number of ways, divorce and execution among them. Medieval.

It was rather different for Henry - in his view, and the view of all nobility at the time, a boy was imperative to continue the succession.

And the Tudor claim to the throne was based on illegitimacy. The transfer of power from Henry to his son was the first peaceful transfer of power in a hundred years.

I am sorry to hear that theworriedwell. Very different context but I was pressurised by my health visitor in the days after I gave birth ( it was around access to records about the birth) it is a deeply unsettling experience

Galaxy

Yes that ethical decision has already been made.
Of course enforcing that law when you have legal abortion is almost impossible I would imagine.

Yes BPAS pressuring me to have an abortion when there were no grounds for it makes me wonder how many legal abortions are legal. Same when I was 17, married and pregnant and my GP suggested abortion as I was "too young" although I dont think that would actually be legal grounds for abortion, I was fit, healthy, married, had a nice home, husband with a job and we were excited about the baby. Not sure where the legal grounds were.

Blinko

Henry VIII managed this issue in a number of ways, divorce and execution among them. Medieval.

It was rather different for Henry - in his view, and the view of all nobility at the time, a boy was imperative to continue the succession.

It’s much earlier than that, you can find out with accuracy now at 6-7 weeks if you use a private DNA test.

When is the baby’s gender determined? Is it at the 20 week scan? Although still legal for medical reasons it is very late in pregnancy and reasons for requesting a termination should be investigated thoroughly. I would imagine the majority of terminations for other reasons are carried out in the early stages of pregnancy.
I agree with abortion being the woman’s choice but I think the current cut off is far too late.

Years ago I worked in the NHS in a high Asian populated area. There was a notice in the Antenatal ultrasound area , it stated that “you will not be informed of the sex of your baby at this scan” Nowadays it would not be so easy to keep to this as the scans are much clearer and the patient can often see . My SiL was told she was having a boy at her scan much to her delight after two girls - wrong !!

Since abortion on grounds of which sex the baby is, is illegal here you wonder what lies these pregnant women are telling GP’s.
The women will be married so what, other than they don’t wish to have any more children can they say ? What if it’s their first baby?
It’s a shocking and terrible thing to do, to abort your healthy child because it’s a girl.😢

We obviously do 'act' in certain ways depending on culture, the advice given to professionals around fgm for example relates to specific cultures.
I think if you have abortion laws as we do in this country then there is very little you can do to enforce the law around abortion and sex selection.

If someone presents herself to a doctor asking for a termination, how is s/he supposed to know whether the reason is, as she may say, that her mental health would suffer if she continued the pregnancy, or if her reason is that she doesn't want a female baby? Both could be true at once, or it could be one or the other. Are doctors supposed to treat women from particular ethnic backgrounds differently on the off chance that a decision has been made for the wrong reason? That, to me, would be very wrong, and may even be illegal in itself, on the grounds of race discrimination.

Also, maybe a bit tangental, but are there illnesses that pass down the female line that would allow pregnancies to be terminated if female and continued if male? If so, that means that sex-based terminations are not actually illegal. Or I suppose it could be seen as 'two-tier' if you want to use a tabloid phrase.

eazybee

Abortion on the grounds of gender is illegal in this country.
It is the law, but there seems to be a growing culture to circumvent the law because of 'cultural differences.' Two-tier
policing?
Reinforcing British values, and stopping an outdated culture which castigates and punishes women for producing a female child when it is the father who determines the sex, are what is necessary.

Do you think that it is only women of Indian descent who abort their babies because they are not their preferred sex? Unfortunately I don’t. People have abortions for myriad reasons, and I don’t doubt that choice of sex is one for some women of all cultures. It’s horrible to think about I know.

If you read the article and compare it to the statistical evidence, there's clear bias in the article and no actual hard evidence that girls are being aborted because of their sex. If they are, it's clearly illegal but that's not what the stats actually prove.

Yes that ethical decision has already been made.
Of course enforcing that law when you have legal abortion is almost impossible I would imagine.

Abortion on the grounds of gender is illegal in this country.
It is the law, but there seems to be a growing culture to circumvent the law because of 'cultural differences.' Two-tier
policing?
Reinforcing British values, and stopping an outdated culture which castigates and punishes women for producing a female child when it is the father who determines the sex, are what is necessary.

theworriedwell

How many healthy babies are aborted by non Asians. I've said about someone I worked with who had one rather than mess her holiday up, I also knew someone who had an abortion as she thought she might get divorced and a teenager who wasn't sure if she'd had sex and if so was it consensual. No idea who the father was, probably the guy she was dancing and flirting with at a club. Anyway an abortion sorted "it" out.

Before you could buy pregnancy tests I had a test at the BPAS, turned out negative but before we knew I had to see a counsellor who not only advised me to have an abortion but pressured me to.

We aren't a culture to lecture about abortion.

That's what I was getting at upthread. There are some reasons for abortion I find uncomfortable, but the choice is always going to be stark - do we allow abortion because a pregnant woman wants one, or do we not? There is a sort of middle ground, which is that we allow it for reasons that others see as reasonable, whether or not the objections are shared by the pregnant woman. That's not really a middle ground at all, though - it relies on subjectivity and 'ethics', as defined by people who will not be affected by the results of their decisions about others.

Anyone can get high minded about things that don't affect them, but equally, nobody can really see into the mind of another, so banning abortion as a means of sex-selection but allowing it for other reasons is never going to work. Fifty years ago, maternal unmarried status might have been seen as an acceptable reason to terminate - is that more or less acceptable than doing so because of the baby's sex? Who's to say?

I could list reasons that I think would make abortion acceptable to me, but my list might be different from yours, or from the list of the baby's father - or crucially, it might be different from that of the woman carrying the baby. I believe that she is the one who has to decide, and I also believe that challenging the thinking behind decisions like that is preferable to banning, however much I may disapprove of them. The alternative is going to be unwanted babies or mistreated mothers. Whether the mistreatment is at the hands of Indian fathers, Irish nuns, social workers or anyone else is immaterial.

I agree Galaxy(10.12).

Generalisations about supposed, unproven generalisations just dilute & shut down debate. As does drawing comparison between between different cultures' approach.

The only moral high ground for me is if a practice, wherever it originates, causes pain & suffering that's sufficient to highlight it in general debate with a view to stop the suffering.

Kandinsky

This won’t be a popular answer - but better to abort an unwanted pregnancy than bring a child into the world to be hated & possibly abused.

To be honest Kandinsky I'm with you on that!