Sex-selective abortions can never be right
I am outraged by the idea of women being allowed to have their babies aborted just because they are the ‘wrong’ sex, as Professor Wendy Savage, a leading ethics expert at the British Medical Association, suggested in The Mail on Sunday last weekend.
I lost my first baby, a girl, following a car accident. While I was in hospital, a woman in the next labour ward who had given birth was told it was a girl. She started wailing, saying her husband would be upset as he desperately wanted a son.
The nurse pointed out that I had just lost a girl and would be perfectly happy with a baby of either sex. That shut her up.
The following day, her husband was billing and cooing over his new daughter, showing no signs of being upset. He obviously had more sense than his wife.
People should be grateful for whatever gender their baby is. It was two years before I had another baby, a boy. I cannot express the joy I felt when I gave birth having previously lost a baby. The gender was the last thing on my mind.
Women who see gender as an issue don’t deserve to have babies, as they obviously see them as some sort of social commodity.
Madeline Bates, St Helier, Jersey I have heard many an expectant woman asked ‘and what do you want – a girl or a boy?’
How distressing this is for those around them who struggle to conceive, perhaps never will and would give anything for a baby – whatever sex.
It seems increasingly acceptable to bemoan that the baby is the ‘wrong sex’, as if complaining about an online order that has gone wrong. Name and address supplied As chair of the BMA’s ethics committee, I feel compelled to clarify that it does not support the termination of pregnancy based solely on fetal sex.
The BMA supports the current law on abortion, and is not calling for changes to allow abortion in these circumstances. Dr John Chisholm, Medical Ethics Committee Chair, British Medical Association I am flabbergasted that Prof Savage, a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist, should favour sex-selective abortion – in reality, spelling the death of unborn baby girls over boys. James Maher, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands Prof Savage lives up to her surname with her opinions on abortion. J. C. Dowling, Durham