Gender-specific abortion – some action, but little progress

An update on the action against one of the doctors in the Telegraph ‘sting’, and the report from the Department of Health

The Telegraph ‘sting’

On 3 November, the Daily Mail reported that “a doctor who allegedly agreed to abort a foetus simply because it was a girl – and then lied about the reason he terminated it – has been suspended for only three months by a medical tribunal”. Earlier posts have followed developments in this case, most recently in March, when the Crown Prosecution halted a private prosecution that had been initiated against the two doctors involved in the Daily Telegraph “sting”. In these two cases, each defendant asked the CPS to intervene and stop the prosecutions under section 6(2) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, following which the CPS was required to consider them according to the test set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors; if, as was the case, the test was not met, the CPS had no choice but to stop the case. Continue reading