There has been a lot of noise about first cousin marriages this week after Richard Holden MP called for it to be banned – and yes, it is still legal in the UK to marry your first cousin. There have been various oppositional arguments that range from ‘the state shouldn’t be involved in these decisions’ to ‘it's an attack on ethnic minority groups'.
For me, neither of those has any merit at all. Marriage is governed by the state, it needs to be carried out in state-approved buildings, by state-approved people, meeting state-approved rules and within that it is already illegal to marry a sibling or parent.
So the state is already involved, and there are already rules, it's not too hard to add first cousins to the prohibitions.
In terms of targeting minority groups, what can I say? I’m sorry that this might upset your sensibilities, and I understand that you may have done this for centuries back home, but we have evolved, and we put the safeguarding and protection of children over your medieval rituals. And let's not ignore the fact that these marriages are often arranged, rather than two cousins falling madly in love! I am happy to point out that the cultures involved, whilst often Muslim, also include some orthodox Jewish and traveller communities and I apply it equally to them all. It must stop. Now.
Let's look at the clear data; first-cousin marriages are far more likely than any other (permitted) couplings to produce a child with severe, disabling, and often life-limiting disease.
These are called recessive genetic disorders. Many of us carry one defective gene for a disease, sickle cell anaemia and cystic fibrosis are two very common examples.
As long as we marry someone who doesn’t carry that defective gene too, the disease won’t be seen in our children. The problem arises when the person we have children with also carries that gene, and then there is no way around it. It is much more likely that a close family member will have the same defective genes as you, it’s why we can’t marry our parents. Simples.
However, as we develop communities in the UK that bring with them traditions of the past, designed to keep family wealth intact, and we have no legislation to say no, the problem is manifesting itself in the UK with children who are destined for a life of misery and pain, often never leaving the hospital or spending much of their time there, placing unimaginable strain on families and their other children and costing the state dearly via care and support.
A quick dive into the data should be enough to ban it today. A recent BBC report for Newsnight found that British Pakistani communities had three per cent of all births in the UK but are responsible for just under a third of all children born with disabilities.
This means that they are 13 times more likely to have a child with a disability than the general population. It was found that in Birmingham, where 49 per cent of mothers are married to a close relative, one in 10 children from first-cousin marriages dies in infancy or develops a serious life-long disability.
First-cousin marriages have no place in modern society, writes Doctor Renée Hoenderkam
GB News/PA
One of the most thorough and detailed reports into the problem was funded by the NHS; The Enhanced Genetic Services Project.
It shows that in Birmingham in 2009-2010, the combined infant stillbirth and death rate was ‘definitely or probably’ due to genetic disorders. Resulting from Pakistani cousin parents was 38 times higher than that among white European babies in the city.
I had experienced the devastating result of first cousin marriages in a London hospital with a large Pakistani community when I trained on wards where these children, who are often unable to speak, are fed through tubes, are ventilated, are being looked after by the NHS for months, even years, often never going home. It’s a miserable life that we should not be bringing on children when we can prevent it.
For the children who do go home, the care needed is astronomical, from daily nursing, doctor appointments, transport to and from hospital, and special schools, all already struggling to cope. The list goes on, and the cost to the child is unquantifiable, but the cost to the taxpayer is also crippling.
Surely, it’s a no-brainer: stop it today. But no, Independent MP Iqbal Mohamed, stood in the House of Parliament this week to argue against Richard Holden. He accepts that it's causing disability in children and that it may involve forced marriage, but he wants to keep the law as it is and embark on ‘education’. What a disgrace. That a British MP in the British Parliament can acknowledge the pain and suffering being inflicted but would argue for the medieval practice for no other reason than, I assume, to protect his vote at the next election is outrageous.
It speaks to the non-assimilation of communities that is dividing this country into silos rather than the blended multi-cultural community of people who accept and live by British norms and values that we desire.
By not talking about these issues, we will never change, and the status quo will continue. Let’s stop the misery of disability being inflicted on these children.