MPs last night voted down a move to clarify in law that abortion carried out on the grounds of gender is illegal.
Conservative MP Fiona Bruce tabled an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill that would make an abortion specifically on the grounds of sex illegal.
Her amendment was defeated by 292 to 201. However MPs voted in favour of another amendment, which provides for a review of the extent of gender selection abortion in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
This amendment was backed by 491 to 2.
Mrs Bruce, making the case for her amendment, told MPs: "The law is being interpreted in different ways because when the 1967 Abortion Act was passed, scans to determine the sex of the foetus were not available.”
Dr Sarah Wollaston, chairwoman of the Health Select Committee, firmly opposed Mrs Bruce's proposal and argued that the amendment could have "unintended consequences".
She warned that the wording of the proposed clause would have implications for existing abortion laws because it would "confer personhood on the foetus".
Jane Ellison, a junior health minister, had argued against the amendment, saying that abortion on the grounds of gender was "already illegal".
Yesterday the former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve MP, who had backed Mrs Bruce's amendment, said sex-selective abortions took place in the UK because people were able to abuse the 1967 Abortion Act, which came into law before the use of ultrasound to determine a baby’s gender was widespread.
Mr Grieve, who was the Government's most senior legal adviser from 2010 to 2014, also criticised the existing law in an article in the Daily Telegraph and said that it had been turned into “little more than a rubber stamp for abortion on demand”.
He urged MPs to support the amendment and said: “We should not allow the present law to limp on in this state any longer”.
But the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, had argued that the amendment was unnecessary. In a letter to MPs she said the Abortion Act already outlawed sex-selective abortion, in that gender is not listed as grounds for termination.
She also warned that criminalising abortion because of gender could inadvertently outlaw those carried out because of gender-specific disabilities.
However Mr Grieve said that such a procedure could be justified under existing grounds – such as the possibility of the baby being born disabled.
Mr Grieve concluded that arguments over legal technicalities should not get in the way of the attempt to outlaw sex-selective abortion.
The bishops’ conference has condemned the use of abortion “as a means of gender selection”. “It is the worst form of discrimination to kill a baby because she is the ‘wrong’ gender,” a spokesman said.
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