Pakistani woman in Britain details her ‘gender selective abortion’

A woman from Pakistani parents who now lives in Britain detailed her experience having a gender-selective abortion in a new article with The Independent.

Her name was changed to protect her identity as the article states “The voice on the other end of the telephone was nervous and excited. A young mother had taken an enormous risk by contacting The Independent” to tell her tale of abortions of babies who are “the wrong sex.”

The woman details how her husband pressured her to have an abortion after the ultrasound revealed the baby was a girl. While this is an illegal practice in the United Kingdom, she stated she has endured two gender-selective abortions.

“I just wanted them to stop,” Samira told The Independent. “I just wanted to run away from there, but the thing was, where would I run away to? What would I do? The last day before I had the abortion I said to him [Samira’s husband] very clearly that what he was doing was wrong.”

According to The Independent, Samira (the fake name used in the article) is pregnant again and about to have an ultrasound scan.

“Since falling pregnant, I think about it all the time. What’s going to happen? I’m really, really scared. I’m stressed out and I’m having nightmares about bleeding and being beaten up,” Samira said. “I think about running away with her and having the baby somewhere, but the thing is I can’t leave my children with him… I have my duty to my other children. I can’t leave them for someone who is not born. I don’t want it to happen.”

She spoke about the need to change the rules on ultrasound scans to make it mandatory to delay giving out gender information to the parents until after 24 weeks of pregnancy, when an abortion becomes practically impossible. “I think there should be a campaign, definitely, to ban gender scans altogether or get them delayed until some time when the abortion cannot happen,” she said.

An abortion rights group, British Pregnancy Advisory Service, denounced the investigative report claiming such practices were “nonsense.”

Check out the full article HERE