‘Available on demand – an abortion if it's a boy you wanted.’ This was the title of a February 2012 Daily Telegraph article reporting on a sting operation carried out by the newspaper. Telegraph journalists had visited multiple abortion clinics in Britain, posing as women requesting an abortion because of the sex of the foetus. The Daily Telegraph reported that its journalists decided to conduct the investigation after (unnamed) ‘doctors, academics and pro-life campaigners all alleged that the procedure was being offered at specific organisations’ (Watt et al, 2012). The article claimed to have found two doctors working in private practices who were willing to authorize an ‘illegal’ termination on the grounds of foetal sex alone. The clinics in question were subsequently reported to the police by the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley.

Although the Crown Prosecution Service ultimately decided not to prosecute either of the accused doctors, sex-selective abortion ballooned into a major political issue. The Telegraph article cited a 2007 study that showed a skewed sex ratio among children born to ‘Indian-born’ women in England and Wales and suggested that this was evidence for sex-selective abortion occurring on a wide scale (Dubuc and Coleman, 2007). Media outlets were quick to raise fears about migrants importing the practice from their country of origin; an article in The Independent, for example, claimed that sex-selective abortions were now ‘commonplace’ among ‘some ethnic communities’ (Connor, 2014). A particular concern was that women with migrant backgrounds might be forced into having abortions by family members if they were carrying a female foetus. In collaboration with South Asian women's campaign groups Jeena International and Karma Nirvana, the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce launched the Stop Gendercide campaign with the aim of ending the practice.

While the Daily Telegraph journalists only managed to secure two appointments in private clinics, and none with major charitable abortion providers such as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) or Marie Stopes, the major providers found themselves dragged into the controversy. The day after its initial story, the Daily Telegraph published a further report alleging that a BPAS counsellor had agreed to ‘forge paperwork’ to allow a woman (accompanied by another undercover reporter) to have an abortion because she wanted a boy instead (Newell, 2012).