The Perils Of Fetal Sex Selection: Terminating Pregnancies Based On Baby’s Gender
What would you do if you discovered early in your pregnancy that you were pregnant with a girl when you wanted a boy? Would you terminate the pregnancy? With the advent of a new DNA test that can determine the sex of a fetus at 7 weeks gestation with a simple blood or urine test, fetal sex selection is now possible. However, before you proceed to pop the cork on your bottle of champagne, a word of precaution is warranted. The Chinese and India dilemmas present a global warning regarding the perils of fetal sex selection. Boys now outnumber girls in China and India and competition is fierce regarding finding a wife or a mate. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), by the year 2020, there will be between 30 to 40 million more boys than girls in China and the statistics in India are equally as alarming. In her book, Sobs In The Night, Xinran describes a scene where a baby girl is born and the father cries out, “Useless thing” and then the baby is dropped in a bucket and dies. This “son preference” is what has caused the unusually large amount of U.S. adoptions of baby Chinese girls.
Clinically, the gender of a baby is only important if Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
