Choosing the Sex Of Your Child: One Step Too Far?

Although it is currently banned within Britain, it seems we cannot shake our obsession with gender selection which is sweeping through other areas of the globe.

There are thousands of couples across the UK who have dreamed of having children for so long that they are grateful to finally have the chance of having a healthy child, regardless of its gender. However, there are a large percentage of couples who are so desperate to specifically have a boy or girl that they are travelling across the globe in order to take advantage of the medical advancements that are banned within the UK. In fact, recent studies show that the UK is home to thousands of couples who have been honest in divulging that they are more than prepared to undergo controversial fertility treatment in order to customize their family with a specially ‘designed’ child.

This process, known as ‘family balancing’, allows expectant parents to select the gender of their child, with an almost 100% guarantee using a technique known as Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD, which is completed in IVF. This procedure is legal within most states in the US, as well as Russia and the Middle East but within the UK, it is being regarded as a step too far by fertility experts who state that procedures such as this should only be utilized in rare medical scenarios.

There are many who strongly believe that by allowing a parent to choose the gender of their baby, that they are ‘playing God’ and helping to encourage what has been referred to as the evolution of designer babies from which a parent may be able to select the colour of their child’s hair and eyes and even their height. Josephine Quintavalle of the UK pro-life group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: ‘This so-called family balancing is a dangerous path to go down. IVF was developed to address genuine infertility problems, not to facilitate discriminatory social engineering of this kind.’ However, there are many who fail to see the point of pro-life campaigners like Quintavalle and instead, have opted to jump on a plane in order to realise their dreams of a specially chosen baby.

One of the most popular locations for the PGD procedure is America where the treatment is legal in almost every state. Patients are not required to complete a medical referral and by searching the procedure on the web, you are guaranteed to find a myriad of clinics that are more than happy to take your cash in the hopes of giving you the baby you’ve always dreamed of having.

PGD works in a manner similar to that of standard IVF, during which the female’s body is stimulated with a range of drugs in order to produce several eggs. The eggs are retrieved once they have matured and are then mixed with their partner’s sperm in a laboratory. After a three-day period, the embryos will be tested and chromosomes analysed in order to identify the sex. Once the desired gender has been indentified, the embryos will be placed back into the womb and the unwanted, or wrong gender embryos, will be discarded, frozen or where applicable, given to childless couples. However, if this appears to be all too simple, it’s because it is. If the woman is of a certain age, it cannot be guaranteed that she will conceive once the embryos are implanted. However, the procedure promises that should she become pregnant, her baby will be of the desired sex.

Within the UK, choosing the sex of your baby is allowed only for medical reasons, such as helping to cure a sex-linked genetic disorder. However, although this law has been put in place, there are many women who are waiting for the day when they too will be able to choose the gender of their baby. Women who have given birth to 5 boys in the hopes of one day of having a girl are contemplating visiting overseas clinics in the hopes of making this dream come true. But the question is: are they being selfish?

There are many parents who have believed the old wives’ tales of having intercourse in a certain way in order to specifically conceive a boy or a girl but once their baby is born, these dreams are long forgotten as they lovingly hold their newborn baby. For those couples without children who are so desperate to hear the patter of tiny feet, these new advances may be a somewhat slap in the face as other couples take full advantage of new medicinal technologies. Hopefully one day, a procedure may be created that will allow these loving couples to welcome a baby into their family and fulfil their dreams of having a child of their own- no matter its gender.

For more information on IVF and pregnancy, visit Babies Base