Scottish Catholic Observer

Pro-life supporters have reacted with fury to the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales not to prosecute two doctors who authorised abortions based on the sex of the child.

The CPS claims that prosecutions would ‘not be in the public interest’ even though they have enough evidence to take the case forward.

A Daily Telegraph investigation last year filmed two doctors agreeing to arrange terminations for women who requested them purely because they said they did not want to have a baby girl.

One of the doctors did so despite likening the practice to ‘female infanticide’ while the other told a woman her job was not to ‘ask questions.’

Paul Tully, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’s (SPUC) general secretary, said it was an outrageous decision.

“If offering to kill a child, for payment, for such a callous reason as that she is the ‘wrong sex,’ is not against the public interest, then it is hard to think anything could be,” he said. “However, prosecuting the doctors responsible is not the most important matter. Stopping the organisations that countenance this kind of practice, such as the abortion clinics and the Department of Health’s Sexual Health Team, is much more important. These are the bodies that Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, should seek to clamp down upon.”

Mr Tully said the case was symptomatic of the morally slipshod approach to the unborn that had been adopted by the Coalition Government.

“Since being appointed as health secretary, Jeremy Hunt has done nothing to enforce any of the grounds for abortion required in the law,” he said. “His predecessor, Andrew Lansley, declared in the wake of the Daily Telegraph story last year, that it was his job as Health Secretary to enforce the law in this area, yet neither he nor Mr Hunt have made any impact on abortion on demand. The non-prosecution of blatant abuses shows how difficult this will be.”

However, the Health Secretary said he was in fact very concerned at the CPS decision.

“We are clear that gender selection abortion is against the law and completely unacceptable,” he said. “This is a concerning development and I have written to the Attorney General to ask for urgent clarification on the grounds for this decision.”