Doctors want to stop gender-based abortion by banning parents from knowing whether they're expecting a boy or a girl until it is too late to end the pregnancy. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied
OBSTETRICIANS want parents to be kept in the dark about the gender of their unborn babies to stop couples demanding abortions to choose a boy over a girl.
The Sunday Times can reveal that couples in Australia are asking doctors to terminate pregnancies because they are unhappy with the sex of their unborn child.
Doctors want to stop the practice by banning parents from knowing the gender until it is too late to end the pregnancy.
The National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has suggested that laboratories performing publicly funded chromosomal tests during pregnancy be banned from revealing the sex of the embryo until after 20 weeks, except in cases of gender-based diseases such as haemophilia.
"You don't keep the test results secret, you just keep the sex secret," association president Andrew Foote said.
He said while he had no first-hand knowledge of gender-based abortion "I think it does happen".
"The view among my colleagues is they're definitely against it," he said.
"But if (patients) were of a view they must have a baby of a particular sex, they could turn up at a termination clinic and say it is for social reasons."
One of Australia's biggest abortion clinics has revealed that parents have requested abortions on gender grounds though it is "extremely rare" and always refused.
But The Sunday Times discovered a couple aborted their baby after discovering at 19 weeks they were having a girl when they wanted a boy.
The couple's GP, Dr Mark Hobart, refused to give them a referral to an abortion clinic and reported the specialist who later terminated the pregnancy to the Medical Board.
"The parents were upfront and told me that was the reason for the abortion," Dr Hobart told The Sunday Times yesterday. "I was dumbfounded.
"To get a request for an abortion for that reason (having a girl when they wanted a boy), I just couldn't believe it. It was the husband who did all the talking he was so insistent."
Despite being refused a referral by Dr Hobart, the mother had an abortion a few days later.
The Medical Board told Dr Hobart on Friday it would not pursue the matter because Victorian doctors are allowed to terminate pregnancies of up to 24 weeks.
A Senate committee is inquiring into draft legislation prepared by "pro-life" Democratic Labor Party senator John Madigan, which would ban Medicare rebates for gender-selective abortions.
The inquiry is also investigating "the prevalence of gender selection with preference for a male child among some ethnic groups".
Senator Madigan yesterday said that "we do know there are cultures where a boy is preferred over a girl", though he did not have statistics on the prevalence in Australia.
Dr Foote said that keeping the baby's sex secret until 20 weeks would be a "reasonable safeguard".
But Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton said women had the right to know everything about their pregnancy.
The Fertility Control Clinic Victoria's biggest abortion provider told the Senate inquiry that 96 per cent of abortions were performed before 12 weeks' gestation, when it was too early to know the sex.
"It is extremely rare for us to receive requests for gender- selection abortion and we do not acquiesce to such requests," the clinic's submission states.
The clinic's psychologist, Dr Susie Allanson, said patients requested gender-based abortions "once in a blue moon".
"It's very rare, and we have to say (to the patient) we don't provide abortion on the basis of gender," she said.
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