SIR ”“ Professor Sally Sheldon and a group of academics object to an attempt by parliamentarians to stop the selective abortion of girls (Letters, January 28).
This issue is one that the Telegraph exposed. It is about the abortion of girls purely on the ground of their sex ”“ the first form of violence against women and girls.
The academics’ letter shows beautifully the need to clarify the law. For too long, confused interpretations of the 1967 Abortion Act have passed unchallenged. Professor Sheldon herself has written elsewhere that the idea that sex-selective abortion is illegal is “far from clear”. We cannot sit idly by as a preference for sons results in selective abortion of daughters.
The letter claims that action will require ethnic profiling. This was not true for female genital mutilation ”“ a predominantly cultural practice ”“ and need not be true for sex-selective abortion….
What, I wonder, is the ethical difference between aborting girls and aborting new life because of Down’s Syndrome or cleft palate or any other disability? If it is violence against girls isn’t it violence against the disabled? What message does it send the latter who are among us now? That we would rather, on balance, that they had not been born? I argued along these lines once at a Labour Party meeting. I was told that my argument was ‘nonsense’; but there was no actual reply to the case I was putting forward.