Today MPs will vote on whether to amend the serious crime bill to make abortion based on foetal gender a crime. As someone who cares about gender discrimination, the idea of sex-selective abortion is hard to stomach. I believe that it is important to address the issues that lead to women being pressured to have abortions solely on the grounds of foetal gender. It is essential that we tackle the complex socio-cultural ideas that promote this gender bias urgently, and at their roots.
But making sex-selective abortion a serious crime – meaning that vulnerable women will be arrested, imprisoned and ultimately blamed for the pressures exerted upon them – is, at best, a bad idea. At worst it is a strategic attempt to criminalise abortion, promoting the faulty logic that women are not to be trusted to make decisions about their reproductive futures.
Related: The Observer view on the sex-selection debate
The UK anti-abortion lobby has been promoting the amendment, realising its capacity to fracture the pro-choice voice
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