Why would the SNP be considering plans to allow women to abort babies because of their sex, I wonder? Could it have anything to do with the practice being most prevalent within certain ethnic communities? Certainly, the abortion law review – commissioned by former First Minister, Humza Yousaf – goes to great lengths to avoid making sex-selective abortions (SSA) the obvious central issue, with the ruling out of a specific ban on SSA delivered almost as an aside.
“[The review group] believed that any prohibition would be unworkable in practice,” explains Prof Anna Glasier, who led the group, “requiring either intrusive and inappropriate questioning of all women regarding their motivation for seeking abortion, or racial profiling and additional questioning of a smaller proportion of women from ethnic communities where sex-selective abortion is believed to be practised”.