Click here to discover how I picked my baby’s gender.
Is it ethical for parents who have fertility problems to choose which fertilized embryo with their desired gender should be implanted and the other “potential babies” be discarded? Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine concluded that Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, otherwise known as PGD, when used solely for non-medical reasons, is morally inappropriate and should be discouraged.
The procedure is being used almost exclusively for couples with legitimate medical reasons of potentially conceiving babies with genetic disorders. The embryo is tested for any genetic disease that it may carry so only the healthy ones maybe implanted. Other than that, perhaps one of the strongest reason for undergoing such process is the parent’s ability to choose their desired gender, especially those who have strong preferences about the gender of their offspring.
But what are the reason why the committee thinks that gender selection and PGD for non-medical reasons is ethically inappropriate? They said that the procedure is ought to be used only to avoid having a child with genetic disorders. Numerous ethical concerns have been raised with such gender selection. Some condemned this process as being nothing more than sex discrimination and future reinforcement of gender bias in society as a whole.
Another argument raised questioning this issue is that when the process is widely utilized, it may result to possible sex ratio imbalances in the future causing long-term social stress due to competition for the reduced number of one’s gender, thus poses a risk of unwarranted gender bias. There’s also a worry that once parents start choosing particular embryos with genetically good traits, how will we treat those children who grew up with undesirable traits?
Whether the PGD is unethical or not, if couples are willing to spend their own money on sex selection, then it would be their choice. Conceiving alone is a blessing, regardless of the gender. Well, there are other natural methods available to conceive the gender of your choice – safer, cheaper and almost 80% accurate most of the time. You just need a little bit of knowledge on how your reproductive system works and of course – patience.
