As newly revealed evidence from the UK Government suggests for the first time in Government statistics that at least 400 sex-selective abortions have taken place in the UK, the UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS, has been caught publishing advice telling women that sex-selective abortion is not illegal.
Further details are provided after our comment below.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said:
“It’s irresponsible for BPAS to publish advice suggesting that sex-selective abortion is not illegal, because it risks normalising sex-selective abortion and is likely encouraging abortions sought purely because of a baby’s sex.
“It is also likely making it much harder for women to push back when a husband, boyfriend, or other family member is pressuring them into an abortion simply because they are expecting a girl. Women trying to resist that pressure by pointing out that sex-selective abortion is unlawful may be met with the response from coercive third parties that the UK’s largest abortion provider itself says it is not illegal.”
Further comment on BPAS and call for the Government to take action
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“The Government has said that sex-selectice abortion is illegal – but at the same time, the UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS, which receives the vast majority of its funding from the Government, is telling women on their website that sex-selective abortion is not illegal – and their senior staff and trustees have previously taken to the media to tell woman that there is nothing wrong with sex-selective abortions and defended doctors caught offering sex-selective abortions.”
“It’s astonishing that the Government is providing tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to this same abortion provider each year”.
“The Government must act without delay to cut all funding it provides to BPAS, urgently update legislation to introduce an explicit ban on sex-selective abortion, and must not pursue further changes to legislation, such as those proposed in Scotland, that would likely make this problem much worse”.
Further general comments on the data
“This is likely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sex-selective abortions happening in the UK. Because many minority communities in the UK have relatively small numbers of births, even proportionally high numbers of baby girls having their lives ended by sex-selective abortion would not show up as a statistically significant distortion in the birth ratios for these communities”.
“So this report is very likely to underestimate the number of sex-selective abortions in the UK. The true scale of sex-selective abortions in the UK, is in all likelihood, far higher than the figures suggest”.
Key points:
UK’s largest abortion provider caught publishing advice telling women that sex-selective abortion is not illegal.
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Details are provided in Mail on Sunday feature published today
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Further details are provided further down this press release.
Newly revealed evidence suggests, for the first time in Government statistics, that at least 400 sex-selective abortions have taken place in the UK
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Pro-choice campaigners have repeatedly stated there is no evidence that sex-selective abortions are happening in the UK – examples from prominent MPs and organisations are provided further down.
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A Department of Health and Social Care review of sex ratios at birth has revealed that approximately 400 sex-selective abortions have taken place to female foetuses of Indian ethnicity between 2017 and 2021
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This is buried deep in the report:
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“…a birth sex ratio over 107 males to 100 females may indicate sex selective abortions. The evidence suggests there may have been approximately 400 sex selective abortions to female fetuses of Indian ethnicity, after 2 or more previous children, in England and Wales over the 5 year period from 2017 to 2021. More detail on estimating the number of sex selective abortions can be found in the technical appendices.”
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“This suggests that sex selective abortions are taking place. This is the first evidence of sex selective abortions since these statistics were first published.”
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This is possibly the tip of the iceberg:
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Because many minority communities in the UK have relatively small numbers of births, even proportionally high numbers of baby girls having their lives ended by sex-selective abortion would not show up as a statistically significant distortion in the birth ratios for these communities. So this report is very likely to underestimate the number of sex-selective abortions in the UK. The true scale of sex-selective abortions in the UK is, in all likelihood, far higher than the figures suggest (see below).
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The report illustrates this limitation, for example, 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, there would need to be 112 boys per 100 girls for it to be flagged as significant.
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The report also outlines that because of this limitation, 80 countries with fewer than 100 births were excluded entirely.
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Countries that have a sex-selective abortion problem and have migrant populations in the UK, where sex-selective abortions may be happening, but where the approach taken by this report is likely to not be able to detect them, include:
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Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Albania, Nepal, Vietnam, South Korea, Armenia, Georgia, Taiwan, Tunisia, Azerbaijan and Montenegro.
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While women can’t find out the sex of their baby until 18 weeks on the NHS pregnancy pathway, the report outlines that it is now possible to identify fetal sex through NIPT testing in private clinics after just 7 weeks gestation.
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Pro-choice campaigners have repeatedly stated there is no evidence that sex-selective abortions are happening in the UK – all the instances below are after the Department of Health and Social Care published the above data in October 2023, which suggests they are happening in the UK.
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June 2025 – Stella Creasy MP to Parliament – “That would deal with the trope of sex-selective abortion, nobody can prove that abortion for sex selection reasons has happened….”
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May 2025 – Stella Creasy MP in Glamour Magazine: “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.”
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July 2024 – UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS, with 24 other organisations, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, in a Parliamentary briefing: “The UK Government has found no evidence that women from some cultural backgrounds are ending pregnancies if they are expecting a girl.”
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Report updated March 2025 – British Medical Association: “…ongoing analysis of gender ratios in Britain have repeatedly found ‘no evidence for gender selective abortions occurring in Great Britain’
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Further information on the abortion provider BPAS and sex-selective abortion
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The BPAS website, where women go to book abortions, explicitly tells women that sex-selective abortion is not currently illegal (this contradicts the UK Government’s position).
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“Is abortion for reason of fetal sex illegal under the Abortion Act? No.”
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“The Abortion Act gives doctors the power to make decisions about whether a woman can end a pregnancy on the basis of specific grounds. It does not prevent a doctor approving an abortion where a woman has mentioned the sex of the fetus…”
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BPAS CEO, senior team and trustees have previously defended doctors who offered sex-selective abortions “no questions asked” and said sex selective abortion is not gender discrimination because gender discrimination applies only to living people
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In 2012, following an undercover Telegraph investigation revealing that doctors were agreeing to provide sex-selective abortions, “no questions asked”…
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In response, the Department of Health stated that “abortion on the grounds of gender alone is illegal.”
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BPAS instead
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1/ had their CEO at the time, Ann Furedi and senior staff member put out an open letter defending the doctors and claiming that “sex selective abortion is not gender discrimination” because “gender discrimination applies only to living people”.
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Letter signed by Ann Furedi (then BPAS CEO), Patricia A Lohr (then BPAS Medical Director), Wendy Savage (for BPAS Trustee) – all others who signed have direct links to BPAS or their research arm.
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2/ published the Britain’s Abortion Law booklet / online material explicitly telling women that sex-selective abortion is not illegal.
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BPAS have consistently lobbied to ensure sex-selective abortion is not explicitly banned in England and Wales. Some examples:
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November 2014 – Voiced opposition to a move supported by the vast majority of MPs (181:1) to explicitly ban sex-selective abortion.
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February 2015 – Actively opposed an amendment to explicitly ban sex-selective abortion.
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2017 – Submission to APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health outlines their opposition to restricting sex-selective abortion.
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July 2024 – Parliamentary briefing outlines that they “strongly oppose efforts” to ban sex-selective abortion
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In 2013, their then CEO, Ann Furedi, said that women are legally free to terminate because of the baby’s gender and that there was nothing wrong with providing sex-selective abortions
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Independent – Pro-choice abortion charity BPAS chief exec Ann Furedi says women are legally free to terminate pregnancy because of gender.
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Telegraph – Women are legally free to abort a baby because of its sex, says abortion charity head.
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ITV This Morning – Ann Furedi said there was nothing wrong with sex-selective abortions.
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In 2017, the BPAS Medical Director, Patricia Lohr, when giving evidence to an Irish parliamentary committee on abortion law reform, was pressed repeatedly about whether she agreed with Furedi’s stance on sex-selective abortion. She responded “I absolutely agree with the view that it is for the woman to decide when and whether she is ready to parent.”
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In 2017, Loose Women host Denise Van Outen became visibly emotional as Ann Furedi, then CEO of BPAS, said that there is nothing wrong with sex-selective abortions. Full video here.
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BPAS Head of Policy Rachael Clarke, justified making sex-selective abortion legal in Scotland.
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November 2025 – Responding to Julie Bindel being appalled by the prospect of sex-selective abortion being legalised in Scotland, Rachael Clarke responded on X, basically advocating for it being justified to legalise sex-selective abortion, if it was for when a mother was in an abusive environment, where she is basically being forced into a sex-selective abortion.
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The obvious answer here is for an abortion clinic to provide her with support to get away from the abuser, not abort her baby girl if compelled by her abuser.
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Response on X
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Kevin Duffy, former Global Director of Clinics Development at abortion provider Marie Stopes International
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“Clarke is wrong, what she proposes is not healthcare, or care of any sort. She wants to provide the abortion and then send the vulnerable woman back into the awful abusive, environment in which she has been living in fear and dread.”
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Other responses
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In 2017, one of the BPAS former Trustees, Wendy Savage, said women should be able to have abortions simply because their unborn child is the ‘wrong’ sex
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Of the 13 members of the Scottish Government Expert Group who recommended Scotland legalise sex-selective abortion, two are past Trustees (Anna Glassier, Sally Sheldon), one is of Head of Advocacy (Rachel Clarke) at the UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service). A number of others on the expert group collaborate on projects with the abortion provider, too.
Peer launches bid to stop sex-selective abortion being legalised in England and Wales
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Baroness Eaton has tabled amendment 459, which would rewrite the abortion clause in the Crime and Policing Bill (191) to stop it from legalising sex-selective abortion.
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Clause 191 was introduced by Tonia Antoniazzi in the Commons after just 46 minutes of backbench debate – there was no prior consultation with the public, no Committee Stage scrutiny and no evidence sessions.
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If Clause 191 becomes law, it would legalise sex-selective abortion for women performing their own abortions at home, throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
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The Government maintains that, under our current legislation, abortion on the grounds of the sex of the baby is illegal because it is “not one of the lawful grounds for termination of pregnancy” set out in the Abortion Act (which stipulates that abortion can only be performed under specific grounds).
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If Clause 191 becomes law, it would no longer be illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, and at any point up to and during birth.
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Over 1,000 doctors have warned that the abortion amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill will make sex-selective abortion legal in England and Wales.
