Abortion

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I have looked forward to this opportunity to say some things that are very dear to my heart. First, millions of girl babies have been aborted in North India, and the difference between the numbers of girls and boys in two states, Punjab and Haryana, is ridiculous. In Punjab it is 10% and in Haryana it is 11%. Bearing that in mind, it leads us to the conclusion that this must never, ever be allowed in this country. Secondly, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Singh, says, Punjab is the homeland of the Sikhs. He once said to me, “What a pity the Sikhs don’t know how good their religion is”. It is a wonderful religion, but they do not follow it. There is a lot of discrimination, which is not unusual, as we know. In Gujarat, not so long ago—this is current, I am not talking about 500 years ago—they used to drown girl babies in buckets of milk saying that they were drinking the milk. There have been such terrible things happening in countries to get rid of girl babies.

I wrote to Jeremy Hunt, and I received a reply from Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, from which I quote two parts. The first is that, “The CPS concluded that the two cases did not provide a clear basis of finding for a gender-based abortion” and secondly, this part is in bold, “The law is clear that termination of pregnancy on grounds of gender alone is illegal and this decision does not alter that”. We can take comfort from that. We have had a bit of debate that should not have happened today about whether there should be abortion at all, or at what stage there should be abortion. I think that it is a woman’s right to have family planning and, if she does not want a baby, not to have it. It is a human right; women have very few human rights and this is an important one.