Parents Should Be Allowed to Choose The Gender of Their Child

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 (covered in point 3 below), making some sort of sexual selection legal and acceptable will reinforce and legitimise gender stereotypes. In practice this will inevitably mean more oppression of women, already seen as less valuable than men in many cultures. Nor is sex selection supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; its writers did not imagine recent developments but did include rights for equal treatment and status for women, which allowing gender selection would undermine.

Children are not toys. They are not meant to be designed to specifications most convenient to the ‘owner’. This is an extension of the consumer society. If we allow parents to choose gender, soon some will want to choose eye colour, or hair colour. That is only the beginning. We are, in allowing this, encouraging false ideas of ‘perfection’ – damning those that don’t look a certain way. Furthermore, since of course there’s no justification for allowing such indulgence at public expense, the divide will grow ever-larger between rich and poor, as the rich tailor not only their clothes and belongings to reflect their wealth, but also the bodies of their children. If a ‘gay gene’ is discovered, would parents be permitted to weed out embryos with it, using the technology this proposal would condone? We really should be encouraging the idea that when it comes to children, you get what you are given – otherwise, people will demand more and more ability to change their kids, and be more and more likely to reject their own child when they don’t get exactly what they want…

This argument veils the likely result of the policy: reinforcement of already unhealthy cultural practices. Selective abortion has meant that gender imbalance in China and India is already very, very high – 1.3 boys to each girl in some regions – demonstrating the likely result of such policies in some countries. Even in western countries some minority groups’ gender preferences may result in serious imbalances in some communities. These imbalances are

socially harmful because in time many young men will be unable to find a partner; in China this is already linked to a rise in sexual violence, kidnapping and forced marriage, and prostitution.

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.

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?

Medical benefits are outweighed by medical costs. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis involves the development of embryos outside the womb, which are then tested for gender. One or two of the desired gender are then implanted in the womb. Those that are not of the desired gender, or are surplus to requirements are destroyed (typically, over a dozen embryos are used to select a single one to be implanted). A human life has been created with the express purpose of being destroyed. This is another form of abortion – only the conception is deliberate. Ultimately, it will be these technologies and not MicroSort that is used, since whilst the latter has a 92% accuracy rate if a girl is desired (itself a lower result than genetic diagnosis), its accuracy falls to 72% for boys, and the vast majority of selections will inevitably be for males. Thus, given that they are so keen to have a child of a particular gender and so unwilling to risk having one of the other gender, parents will not risk using MicroSort. Even if they do choose it, whilst there have not been overt problems thus far, scientific experts like Lord Winston express the fear that the process damages sperm, making genetic mutation much more likely. Both techniques are therefore to be condemned.

In the view of many, the new technologies are not morally different from abortion – in all cases a potential life is taken. In any case, the cost of these new methods is so high, and likely to remain so, that the proposition argument is irrelevant – the use of ultrasound scanning leading to selective abortion is so much cheaper that this great evil will not be reduced. Instead, these new technologies are likely to make selective abortion more common, as if they are legalised they will appear to legitimise throwing away a human life simply because the parents would prefer, e.g a boy rather than a girl.