Probe ordered into 'preferred sex' abortions

Pregnant women are being given illegal abortions in the UK after complaining their unborn child is "the wrong gender", it was claimed last night.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has ordered an investigation and said: "I'm extremely concerned to hear about these allegations. Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong."

Covert film and audio footage taken by undercover reporters allegedly shows staff of at three private practices agreeing to terminations when the mother says she wanted a child of the opposite sex.

At one clinic in Manchester a doctor was allegedly recorded booking a patient in for an abortion of a female foetus after the pregnant woman told her: "I can't have it, this baby, because of the gender, so that's just how it is."

Gender abortions are usually demanded either for cultural reasons in which girls are considered to be less valuable or desirable as boys, or for the desire to "balance" an existing family.