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9 hours ago
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While marriage between cousins can lead to “severe” health effects in offspring, a ban would be “damaging”, experts have warned in advance of a parliamentary debate on outlawing it.
A private member’s bill was introduced in December proposing banning cousin marriage by Basildon and Billericay MP Richard Holden, who said the practice poses “risks to health, freedom … the cohesion of our society”. The bill is due to get its second reading on Friday.
Cousin marriage increases the risk of the presence of “faulty genes” in both parents, leading to greater chance of recessive conditions such as haemophilia, Cohen syndrome or muscular dystrophy.
The proposed ban has triggered a debate over the public health implications and civil liberties, with experts saying education is a better way of dealing with a declining trend, when other issues like deprivation and air pollution pose a wider public health risk.
Natasha Rattu, CEO of the charity Karma Nirvana, which works with survivors of forced marriage and honour-based abuse, said the “Islamophobic” backlash which had followed Richard Holden’s bill was “counterintuitive to anybody affected by the negative impacts of first-cousin marriage, who would surely, on the back of seeing that, be more reluctant to get help if they needed.
“It is clear there’s more work that absolutely needs to be done. However, simply banning first-cousin marriage and rushing through legislation is not the best course of action. Any action needs to be centred on consultation with people affected by it,” Rattu added.
Professor Neil Small is co-author of the Born in Bradford study, which has been tracking people’s health in the West Yorkshire city – beginning with 13,7776 pregnancies in 2007 – and includes the largest body of evidence on children born to cousin marriage in the UK.
“There’s definitely an enhanced risk for children’s health from cousin marriage … in a relatively small number of people, but when it does happen the effects can be severe, producing higher rates of infant mortality and greater levels of illness in some children,” he said.
Small told the Guardian the issue would be “better dealt with” by more readily available “genetic testing” and education about the risks, and that “upsetting rhetoric” from Conservative politicians could deter people from “science-based” approaches that would help them make informed choices, at a time when the “single biggest thing that damages children’s health is deprivation”.
He said a ban could require couples to sign a declaration or undergo testing to enforce, and since most cousin marriages in the UK are Islamic unions, could result in fewer people following up with civil ceremonies.
“If you discourage people from getting civil marriages, you take away the protection of the law if anything goes wrong. I think that’s often to the disadvantage of women, and, in that sense, a potential health disadvantage,” he added.
Last month in the Commons, Iqbal Mohamed, Independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, said “genetic test screening” was a better approach to “documented health risks” of cousin marriage and that a ban would not be “effective or enforceable”.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK, which represents 30,000 Muslims, said a “damaging” ban would “curb fundamental freedoms and stigmatise”, and that “marriages within extended families often are a means of providing support, stability and love within the family unit”.
Born in Bradford found six out of 100 children born to first-cousin marriage had a “congenital anomaly” or recessive condition.
Researchers found cousin marriages had dropped from 62% at the outset, to 28% among mothers under 25 in 2020, as more parents born or raised in the UK and educated to A-level or higher felt it wasn’t necessary to maintain social structures, with “considerable recognition” in Bradford from health providers of the value of genetic testing and counselling.
In a statement, Karma Nirvana called for a “thoughtful, survivor-led approach” informed by “those on the frontlines who understand the profound consequences of these unions”.
“[We] cannot support Richard Holden’s bill … not because we condone cousin marriage, but because we believe the true agenda is not to address the harms that can arise from it, but to use it as a tool for political point-scoring, inciting hate and driving a wedge between communities.”
