THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: NHS maternity units are refusing to tell expectant parents the gender of their unborn baby, an investigation has found.
The hospitals say they are too short-staffed to establish the sex of the foetus during ante-natal screening.
But some medical groups believe the NHS policies are being driven by fears that females could be selectively aborted among cultures which value boys more highly.
There is also concern that it is driven by people threatening to sue over being told the wrong gender of child.
The Council of Europe is due to consider a draft resolution in October which recommends that all its 47 member states - including Britain - instruct hospitals to "withold [sic] information about the sex of the foetus" from parents.
The move is a bid to prevent the practice of selective abortion, which they say has reached worrying proportions in some former Soviet states.
The plans have triggered alarm in this country, where pregnant women who want to know if they are due a boy or a girl expect to find out, usually during 20 week scans to check for abnormalities, and sometimes at 12 weeks.
Now, a survey of maternity units in England discloses that several are already refusing to share the information. » | Laura Donnelly and Will Taylor | Sunday, September 25, 2011
