Sex selection: just because we can doesn’t mean we should
As I read the opinion piece in the New York Times about fertility clinics that permit parents to choose the sex of their baby before pregnancy, I was suddenly aware that I had strong feelings about this. As I tried to analyze my indignation, I realized that my emotions came from a place beyond mere reason.
Although technically, this issue could be reduced to a matter of sperm sorting – we all know it’s much more than that. Choosing the sex of your unborn child wanders into an unexplainably uncomfortable territory – swirling unconscious feelings about the value of human life, sexual equality, and the pain of sexism that many have experienced. We have heard the horrible stories about female babies being selectively aborted, or left to die in the elements in India and China, and we wonder if choosing the sex of a baby is somehow part of the same phenomenon.
Why should it matter which sex the baby is? Why is “family balance” cited as a reason to sex select? Perhaps the balance comes from the makeup of the individual personalities in a family, or maybe from parents who plan for the right number of children, not the gender of them.
Personally, I cannot support the practice of sex selection for anything other than sex-linked genetic disease prevention (and even this makes me feel a little uncomfortable, frankly).
I’m curious to know if men and women are equally disturbed by the practice of sex selection… What do you think?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
