Labour torpedoes attempt to outlaw same sex abortions

MPs are likely to vote against attempts to outlaw abortion on grounds of gender after Labour warned that it will have "troubling consequences".
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, told Labour MPs that sex-selective abortions are already illegal under the Abortion Act so new legislation is not needed.
She said that the move could inadvertently outlaw abortion in cases where there are "gender specific abnormalities".
In a letter to MPs, she also warned that the amendment has the potential to undermine Britain's abortion laws because it uses the phrase "unborn child".
Miss Cooper said that the term would open abortion laws to judicial challenge because "children are accorded a wide range of protections and rights that are not accorded to the foetus".
Miss Cooper's intervention provoked a furious response from both Labour and Tory MPs who are behind the amendment to the Serious Crime Bill.
The amendment, which will be put before MPs on Monday, clarifies that "nothing" in the abortion act allows a pregnancy to be terminated on the grounds of the sex of the foetus.
The possibility of sex – selective abortion in the UK was exposed in a Daily Telegraph investigation in which two doctors were filmed agreeing to carry out terminations because the unborn babies were girls. Police investigated, but the Crown Prosecution Service later refused to bring charges against them, saying that it was not in the public interest.
The decision exposed uncertainty over the law. Ministers insisted that the practice was illegal, but guidance from the British Medical Association says there could be circumstances in which it "would be lawful".
In an article for The Daily Telegraph the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve warns that Britain's "limp" laws have "rubber stamped abortion on demand" and need urgent reform to end sex-selective terminations.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11427987/Labour-torpedoes-attempt-to-outlaw-same-sex-abortions.html