A girl or a boy – what will it be? Some prospective parents want to be able to choose the gender of their child, while others prefer to let nature take its course and live with the element of surprise. Is either approach acceptable? Is it wrong to want to pre-select the gender of your child?
History of Sex Selection
China and India have cultures that dictate a clear preference for male children, and have set the tone for the raging debate about the ethics and impact of sex selection. There is a rising rate of abortions involving female fetuses in these countries. China’s government-mandated one-child policy has complicated matters.
How Is the Choice Made?
Sex selection is done through two different methods: embryo selection or sperm sorting.
Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) with in vitro fertilization (IVF): IVF is when a woman’s eggs are fertilized with sperm outside of the uterus to create an embryo and then implanted in the uterus with the hope of successful pregnancy. A fertility specialist can test the gender of the embryo and insert only the one that is the selected sex. The unwanted embryos can be frozen for later use or discarded.
Sperm sorting: Sperm, not the woman’s egg, determines the sex of an embryo. For an additional cost of $4,000-6,000 on top of the cost for an IVF procedure, MicroSort is an option. MicroSort is a sperm sorting technology that is pending FDA approval. It is more successful in producing girls than boys. “Enriched” specimens are used for insemination or in vitro treatments. The success rate of gender selection with MicroSort is 88 percent for female and 73 percent for male.
The Opposition
There are many groups opposed to sex selection. Here are a few opinions:
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes sex selection except for patients who carry a gender-specific genetic disease. It states that there is no medical basis for patients who exclusively want to pick the sex of their child. The ACOG disagrees with these “sexist practices.” It also disagrees with the concept of “family balancing” (pre-selecting a son if you already have a daughter, or vice versa, so the family has an equal balance of genders).
The United Nations disagrees with sex selection practices for nonmedical reasons. This practice is outlawed in Australia, Canada, Britain and a collection of countries in Asia, South America and Europe.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a group of physician infertility specialists, states that sex selection should “not be encouraged” as a reason for using IVF.
The Supporters
MicroSort: If approved by the FDA, the developers of this technology consider it to be an ethical choice for family balancing. Its proposal includes:
- The technology will not be used for first pregnancies.
- Patients seeking “family balancing” after proof of at least one previous live birth with legal records.
- It will be used for genetic disorder exclusion.
Whether MicroSort receives FDA approval or not, the general conclusion of many on this issue is that not enough Americans would choose to select their child’s sex, first born or otherwise, to a degree where the sex balance of the overall world population would be impacted.
