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In many ethnic minority communities, the pressure to give birth to sons rather than daughters can be overwhelming – and sometimes heartbreaking. Cahal Milmo talks to Britons with experience of the cultural bias against female babies.

Rupi remembers her second pregnancy with tearful dread. Having given birth to a girl two years before, she had expected the further love and support of her husband and his family. Instead, she came under extraordinary pressure to have an abortion.

The 29-year-old British Indian, who has asked The Independent not to reveal her real name, found out during a private scan that the child she was expecting was a girl. It was at this point that congratulations turned to consternation.

She told The Independent: "It was a completely traumatic time. I had this child growing inside, a beautiful thing. But my family weren't happy, they wanted me to have a son. My husband's family were not wealthy and a son is so cherished.

"I'll never forget. My mother-in-law sat me down one evening and said I should think about making the pregnancy go away. It was clear what she meant. When I told my husband what she had said, he said it was something we could consider. I was shocked. I felt as if my baby had become dirty, shameful."

After seeking the help of a community group near her home in Slough, Rupi, who comes from a Sikh family, persuaded her family that she should keep her daughter, now a bouncing three-year-old girl. But she has no plans for further children.

Other outcomes are not so happy.

In communities of different faiths and ethnicities across Britain, there is evidence that women are seeking abortions both in the United Kingdom and abroad on the sole basis that their unborn child is a girl.

The Independent has been told of at least 12 cases in the Midlands where women have travelled to India to terminate a female foetus. Whether voluntarily or as a result of pressure from spouses and relatives, mothers-to-be are shaping - or being compelled to shape - their families to service the notion that a son is culturally, economically and socially more desirable than a daughter, according campaigners and clinicians within these communities.

From Chinese to Pakistani couples, Muslim to Hindu to Sikh, the practice is deeply rooted, springing from reasons such as the desire for a male to continue the family name, or the wish to avoid the swingeing financial burden of paying a dowry of up to £25,000 per daughter. More ethereal prejudices include the belief that if a son - and not a daughter - administers the last rites to a father, then the patriarch's soul is speeded to heaven.

Community workers told The Independent that there may be dozens of female foetuses a year in Britain which are being terminated because of "son preference".

Jasvinder Sanghera, a leading campaigner on forced marriages and honour violence against women, who founded the charity Karma Nirvana, said: "I think almost any Asian woman you talk to would say she feels a pressure to have a male child. There will be many, many Asian women out there who are pregnant and who are thinking, 'please, please let it be a boy'.

"If you have a daughter, these women will tell us, they feel they have let their husband or in-laws down. In those circumstances, women are seeking abortions if they can find out that the child is a girl."

Asked what proportion of families would have a preference for a son, she added: "Without a shadow of doubt, more than 50 percent."

An investigation by the Daily Telegraph last year exposed two doctors who were apparently willing to authorise abortions based on gender, though the Crown Prosecution Service decided to press charges.

Seema, 36, an Afghan based in London who works with women's groups, said: "It goes on. Often it is a woman who is brought from Afghanistan and the tribal areas where these beliefs are very strong. It is not frequent but we hear of doctors who will sign off on the papers."

Dr Sudhir Sethi, a NHS consultant paediatrician who specialises in child health in Leicester, told The Independent he knew of 12 families in the city where mothers had travelled to India to terminate a female foetus.He said: "There are no reliable and absolute figures to say how many [are travelling abroad for terminations] but we can say that they are more than just a few, to say the very least.

Illustrating the problem, the doctor cited the words of a woman from Britain's Punjabi community, the region of northern India where selective abortion is most prevalent: "They go on holiday with a belly and a baby inside, and they return with no baby and no belly."

The terminations are also taking place within Britain, according to community workers.

While many NHS hospitals have a policy of refusing to divulge the gender of a foetus until after the 24-week abortion limit, private scans are available.

And yet the cultural underpinning to the desire for a son runs deeply across some of Britain's ethnic minorities and indeed extends among white Britons, where so-called "family balancing" is increasingly cited as a reason for the use of emerging technologies such as sperm washing to select the gender of a child.

As one worker for a helpline for Chinese women put it: "Why shouldn't a woman be allowed to decide whether the child she carries is a girl or a boy? There is a right for the woman to control her body."

The desire to avoid the payment of dowry, the practice of a bride's family providing either physical goods or cash for the "transfer" of a daughter, is cited as a particular reason why a daughter is considered a liability.

Mrs Sanghera said: "These attitudes are completely alive and kicking in our communities. And yet nobody is speaking out about them. We should be in no doubt at all, this preference for sons and pressuring a woman to achieve that end is part of the same set of problems as honour abuse and forced marriage. "

The charity said it was also aware of cases where women who have given birth to multiple daughters are simply divorced and a new wife sought who can provide a son.

Judy Barber, a senior call handler for the charity, said: "Many callers report that in their families and communities the birth of a boy is much more welcome than that of a girl. Two callers said that when a girl is born it is 'like a funeral'."

There is evidence that similar attitudes have been continued among second and third generation offspring of migrants. A BBC survey found that two thirds of young British Asians believe that families should live according to the concept of "honour", with nearly one in five saying physical punishment of a woman for certain behaviour was justifiable.

Mrs Sanghera said: "The links back to South Asia are very strong and we see very often that these attitudes are transferred from one generation to the next. This is not a prejudice that can be quickly dismantled."