The amendment was brought to a vote in House of Commons earlier in the wake of a newspaper investigation which found found three doctors offering to arrange abortions of baby girls purely because of their sex.
Evidence was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service which said that although there was enough evidence, it was not in the 'public interest' to bring charges.
Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer, later issued a statement saying the law 'does not, in terms, expressly prohibit gender-specific abortions'.
Conservative MP Fiona Bruce who introduced the amendment said hoped it would "eradicate any confusion that there might be about this issue."
Speaking before the vote, Ms Bruce told MPs the BMA and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service had contradicted ministers "over a practice that the government states is illegal".
The amendment is unlikely to become law due to lack of parliamentary time.
The Bishop of Norwich, Rt Revd Graham James, is serving in the House of Lords this week and told Premier it was 'sad' the law needed to be clarified.
He said: "So many parents who perhaps didn't want a boy or a girl, or they didn't expect to have a child who had Down Syndrome grow to love that child and to be changed by that child."
The Bishop added that children were "not a commodity to be purchased".
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has released a statement about today's debate.
It said: "The Abortion Act gives doctors the power to make decisions about whether a woman can end a pregnancy on the basis of specific grounds.
"It does not prevent a doctor approving an abortion where a woman has mentioned the sex of the foetus, but they would not be able to authorise the abortion for that reason alone - as the Department of Health has repeatedly made clear.
"One of the grounds of the Act would have to be met. There is consensus on this, so it is unclear what this bill is designed to achieve. There will be rare circumstances where gender may be a factor in a woman's decision making - each case will be individual and doctors have the authority to decide whether that individual woman meets the criteria set out in the Act.
"In our experience women in the UK are not requesting abortions for reasons of foetal sex, and extensive analysis by the Department of Health found no evidence of skewed gender ratios in any community in this country. If any woman were however under pressure to terminate her pregnancy on the basis of the sex of her baby, her needs would certainly not be served if she felt she was unable to divulge this fact. Any woman who feels she is being forced to end a pregnancy she wants to continue needs to be able to discuss in confidence what is happening. In this way appropriate help and support can be provided so that she can make the right decision for her. Women need to feel they can speak freely to staff about their reasons for requesting an abortion, and legislation which seeks to effectively criminalise these discussions could potentially make their situation much worse.
"The UK is one of few countries which stipulates that a woman's request for an abortion needs to be approved by 2 doctors before it can be performed. Women in this country have no right to end a pregnancy, at any gestation. We should think extremely carefully before endorsing more restrictions on women's already limited ability to make their own reproductive choices. Where gender inequality exists, it will not be improved by further curbing women's ability to make decisions about their own bodies and lives."
Conservative MP, Fiona Bruce:
