Gender Selection
Should
gender selection be allowed for parents wanting a baby boy or
girl?
Gender selection is widely practised
around the world.
 |
Gender selection
is something many parents want: to decide the sex
of their children. |
|
Gender selection
is easy to do but raises huge moral / ethical issues. |
|
Gender selection
can take place by encouraging in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
only by sperm carrying the x or y chromosome. |
|
Gender selection
can take place immediately after IVF when embryos are tested
before implantation. |
|
Gender selection
can take place when the developing foetus is tested, either
genetically or by looking at ultarasound images, with abortion
of a foetus if the "wrong sex". |
|
Gender selection
can take place after birth when one or both parents kills
their own baby. |
While most people would be horrified at the thought
of murdering a newborn baby just because it is the wrong gender,
this has been happening in India and China, possibly elsewhere. Gender
selection has become common (by one method or another) because
many parents have decided
that if they are only going to have one child, it should be a
boy.In India, China and other nations,, baby girls are also
valued far less than baby girls
in some communities.
The Accademy of Social Sciences in Bejing research
times have found that in some parts of China there are 120 boys
to only 100 girls because of Gender Selection - natural births
produce a ratio of 105 to 100. Another study of women migrating
to Bejing
found they were arriving with 159 boys to only 100 girls. Gender
Selection in China has already produced a very profound national
imbalance with many tens of millions of young men now growing
up without women to marry.
In India there is a similar problem with Gender
Selection, and this has been the case for many years. A study
in 1985 of
women having amniocentesis (sampling of cells in the fluid surrounding
a developing foetus in the womb) in Mumbai (Bombay) found that
90% were carries out to determine the gender of the child, and
that 96% testing positive for a girl resulted in abortion. Although
now illegal to abort in India on the basis of Gender Selection
alone, ultrasound is commonly used to make the diagnosis before
the
20th week of pregnancy and abortion is a common result.
In the UK recently two parents who had seen a daughter
die requested gender selection to guarantee that their next child
be a girl, but were refused - against British law. They
said that they had many sons and desperately needed a daughter.
Indeed they claimed that they had a human right to a baby girl
and that gender selection should be allowed - as an exception for
them.
The trouble is that society as a whole is not capable
of handling gender selection without terrible results. Cultures
vary. A report in October 2000 found that 75% of newly wed
couples want their first child to be a girl - and if many families
have only one child. what then? Even if they all have two
children, statistically there will be far too many women in Japanese
society, assuming gender selection becomes common practice.
And why stop at gender selection? Why not start
selecting future babies on the basis of predicted intelligence,
athletic ability, musical talent, height or personality tendencies?
The human genome project, coupled withGenetic
engineeringg research
is giving us huge powers to predict the future of human beings.
We don't yet know which genes are good at predicting intelligence,
but there is no doubt that we will. What then?
You can be sure that there will be huge pressures,
if gender selection becomes normalised, to continue with selection
for a host of other characteristics.
Do you really want to live in that kind of world?
A world where gender selection routinely condemns to destruction
healthy foetuses just because they don't fit the personal preferences
of selfish parents?
Gender selection is a dangerous
avenue to go down.
* Dr Patrick Dixon is author of The Rising Price
of Love published by Hodder. Full
text available free on the web - press here.
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