The architect of Britain’s abortion law, Lord David Steel, is horrified by the fact that sex selective abortions take place on the strength of it.
 
It was widely assumed that sex-selective abortions were illegal under Lord Steel’s 1967 Abortion Act. However, the British DPP has deemed otherwise.
 
The sex of a child is not a ground for abortion under the Act as such. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said that it would be difficult to prosecute doctors for sex selective abortions and also that having a child of a particular sex could cause the mother such distress that she could legally have an abortion on the mental health ground.
 
In reacting to this, Lord Steel said: “Gender selection in abortion is wholly repugnant and therefore we must hope that the General Medical Council will issue guidance on this important issue as soon as possible.”
 
Earlier this year, Lord Steel raised concerns that repeat abortions are being used as a form of contraception.
 
He said this was “never the purpose of the 1967 reform”.
 
The problem for Lord Steel is that once you introduce abortion, it has a logic all of its own.
 
Abortion is not a medical treatment; it is a social reaction to a culture which says that says sexual freedom is all and must be protected to the utmost, up to and including abortion.
 
The idea that abortion could ever be limited to “hard cases” in such a culture is naïve in the extreme.
 
In years to come, some of our own politicians may well say they had no idea that Ireland’s abortion law would become permissive over time and lead to widely available abortion. If they do, they will have been wilfully blind. Abortion admits of no limiting principle once choice and freedom are everything.