Human Gender Selecting

Jessica McIntosh
Medical Office Management
Dr. Bridget Kelly
Bryant & Stratton

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to provide a concise review of the ethical issues that are commonly raised in the debate between non-medical sex selection and natural selection. Background information on sex selection technologies is provided, as is a description of the process regarding the medical procedure. Arguments for and against gender selection will be explained and compared and conclusions will be drawn. Included will be the pros and cons of gender selection. Finally, the views of people I know as well as my own.

Aside from cases in which it is used to prevent an inherited disease more likely to strike one gender than the other, should parents be permitted to use technology that selects the gender of their children? One of the first pieces of information that parents receive about a newborn baby is its gender. The widespread use of ultrasound technology during pregnancy even allows many parents to find out whether their baby is male or female before it is born. In recent years, technology has enabled parents to go one step further. They can now, with a good chance of success, take steps to select the gender of their children.
While gender selection is legal in the U.S., it has generated some controversy among the medical advisory groups that tackle questions of bioethics. For instance, although the sperm-separation method is widely endorsed for families that have one or more children of a particular gender and want one of the other, the embryo-implanting method is not universally endorsed for nonmedical purposes. The issue is more controversial in Britain, where nonmedical gender selection has been banned since 2003. In March 2005, a British government panel recommended, by a narrow margin, that parents be allowed to use gender selection to balance their families. The recommendation sparked a heated debate in Britain.
In some Asian countries such as China and India, of a more improvised form of sex selection. In those countries, the cultural preference for boys is strong, and parents often determine the gender of their children through ultrasound and then abort the fetus if it is a girl. Although the governments of China and India have outlawed the practice, it has already affected the ratio of men to women, a situation that is blamed for the kidnapping and trafficking of women who are later sold as brides to men who cannot find wives. Although somewhat distinct from the issue of gender selection in the U.S. and Britain, the Asian gender selection dilemma influences that debate as well.
Those against gender selection tend to approve of its use for the prevention of disease but oppose its nonmedical application. They argue that it allows parents to customize their children and could lead to cases in which parents select other characteristics, such as intelligence and appearance. They add that sex selection can encourage gender discrimination and even lead to a gender imbalance of the type seen in India and China.
Those who are for gender selection counter that it should be the choice of parents themselves, and is a valuable option for couples that would otherwise simply keep having children until they have one of the desired genders. They dispute the assertion that sex selection will lead to gender discrimination and imbalance, noting that U.S. couples have not shown a strong preference for either boys or girls. And they say that if a particular society is biased against one gender, that is not the fault of sex selection technology but of ingrained attitudes that have to be corrected.
One example of such technology is the Ericsson method, which was developed by Ronald Ericsson in 1975 and continues to be used at clinics today. In the Ericsson method, sperm are placed in a test tube filled with viscous fluid. Since male-producing Y-chromosome sperm swim faster than female-producing X-chromosome sperm, they can be separated from each other based on their positions in the test tube and then used for insemination. The Ericsson method is inexpensive, but its success rate is debated, with detractors saying it has no more than a 50% chance of producing the desired gender.
Another technique, flow cytometry, began as a means of selecting the sex of farm animals. It was applied to humans beginning in 1995. That method used by the company MicroSort, a division of the Genetics and IVF Institute, sorts X and Y sperm by staining them with fluorescent dye. Because of differences in the amount of DNA contained in the two types of sperm, the dye glows more brightly on X sperm than on Y sperm, allowing equipment to separate them based on their level of fluorescence. Sperm of the desired type is then used to impregnate the woman through artificial insemination.
The MicroSort procedure costs several thousand dollars, and according to the company, is accurate roughly 75% of the time in selecting boys and around 90% of the time in selecting girls. The Food and Drug Administration is currently conducting a study of babies born through use of the method to determine whether they have an unusual number of birth defects.
A third technique uses in-vitro fertilization (IVF), mixing parents' sperm and eggs to create embryos in laboratories. In a process known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), cells are then taken from the embryos to determine gender, and those of the desired gender are implanted in the woman's uterus. In-vitro fertilization is already used to help infertile couples have children, and laboratories use PGD to screen for genetic diseases in accordance with that purpose. PGD has a higher success rate than the Ericsson method or MicroSort, allowing parents to choose their baby's gender almost 100% of the time. However, before that can happen, the in-vitro fertilization must result in a successful pregnancy, and the chances of that happening are significantly lower. In addition, PGD is more expensive than MicroSort, costing close to $20,000.
Some couples choose to select the gender of their children do so to avoid genetic diseases that are more likely to appear in one gender than the other, such as Duchenne's muscular dystrophy and hemophilia, which mainly afflict boys. Many, however, have begun to select the gender of their children for nonmedical reasons, and clinics have begun to more prominently advertise that option. Those developments have generated increased controversy over the practice.
The issue has inspired less controversy in the U.S. than in Britain, where rules instituted by a government board charged with regulating reproductive technology largely banned gender selection in 2003. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) ruled that sex selection was legal only when used to prevent gender-related diseases. Although public opinion polls in Britain showed that a majority supported the ruling, gender selection advocates complained that it was unfair to couples seeking the option, who were forced to go abroad to choose the sex of their children.
In the U.S., sex selection for nonmedical purposes is legal, but still controversial. In 2001, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a medical professional organization, issued an opinion stating that the sperm-sorting technique used by MicroSort should be available for nonmedical use in cases of "gender variety," also known as "family balancing," where parents who already have one or more children of a particular gender want one of the other gender. Another ASRM opinion, however, discourages use of the PGD method for nonmedical purposes. Despite the stance taken by the ASRM, many U.S. clinics offer elective PGD to parents. More recently, an opinion issued in 2004 by the President's Council on Bioethics recommended that more attention be paid to the use of gender selection.
I will now discuss the “Pros” views of Gender selection. It is a fact of life that sometimes parents are disappointed with the gender of their children. This is true, for example, when they already have six sons but want a daughter. Guaranteeing (or improving the chances of) a child being of the gender they want means that the child is more likely to fit into the family’s dreams. He or she is, bluntly, more likely to be loved. It is hardly shattering the mystery of childbirth. Knowing what gender a child will be is tremendously helpful for parents in planning for the future (picking clothes, color schemes, toys, names etc).
The “Cons” seemed interesting to me and also seemed to have good reasoning. Freedom of choice is a good principle, but harm is done to others by the practice of sex selection and so it should not be allowed. Apart from the danger that serious gender imbalances will result making some sort of sexual selection legal and acceptable will reinforce and legitimize gender stereotypes. In practice this will inevitably mean more oppression of women, already seen as less valuable than men in many cultures. Children are not toys, they are not meant to be designed. This is an extension of the consumer society. If we allow parents to choose gender, soon some will want to choose eye color, or hair color. That is only the beginning. We are, in allowing this, encouraging false ideas of ‘perfection’ – damning those that don’t look a certain way. Having a child is a process of wonder and awe. These proposals make having children to something more like pre-ordering a car. To many people the moment of conception is the start of life, touched by God and not to be interfered with or abused out of selfish human motives.

I personally do not think that gender selection is a good thing. If I had the choice to go down that road, I would not participate in that procedure. I believe that it is up to God to decide what a child will look like. Children are not replacements. They are individuals, unique in themselves. How will a child feel if they know that their primary purpose for being on this earth is to serve as a fill-in for a dead sibling? I believe that you get what God gives you. As long as your child, whatever the gender may be, is healthy, it should not even matter if it is a boy or a girl.

REFERENCES

Bailey, Ronald. "Sex Selection." Reason, October 3, 2001, www.reason.com.
"Church Criticizes Baby Sex Selection Report." Guardian, March 24, 2005, www.guardian.co.uk.
"Gender Selection in Demand." CBS News.com, March 16, 2005, www.cbsnews.com.
"Missing: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India." United Nations Population Fund, June 2003, www.unfpa.org.
Shannon, Thomas. Reproductive Technologies: A Reader. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Michael J. Sandel. "The Case Against Perfection." The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 293, No. 3 (April, 2004).