Should sex selection be a right for IVF couples?

Jul 17 2007 by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

David Bartlett looks at a leading doctor’s claim that it should

THE head of Liverpool’s world-class fertility unit sparked controversy last week when he said IVF parents should be allowed to choose the sex of their baby.

Charles Kingsland, head of the Hewitt Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said the law should be changed to allow sex selection.

Appearing in front of a Parliamentary committee, Mr Kingsland, the centre’s clinical director, agreed demand would be very low, because few parents wanted “either a football team or a girls’ choir”.

But he said that the alternative – couples aborting a pregnancy because a scan revealed a foetus was the “wrong” sex – was worse.

But views like Mr Kingsland’s are not widely held. According to a Government consultation, the public was opposed to sex selection.

Last year, then Health Minister Caroline Flint warned choosing a baby’s sex was a “slippery slope to people deciding one gender is more important than the other”.

Mr Kingland’s views are also likely to anger religious groups and those who argue that choosing the sex of a child is tantamount to playing God.

A draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which will ban parents from choosing the sex of their child, except in strict medical circumstances, is being examined by a committee of MPs.

It would mean male or female chromosomes would only be screened out where inherited diseases are more likely to be passed on to one gender.

Today, the Daily Post asks: Should parents undergoing IVF treatment be allowed to chose the sex of their baby?

davidbartlett@dailypost.co.uk

No: Children would be seen as lifestyle accessories
Anthony Ozimic Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 

THE Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Moreover, “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind ...”

The embryonic human being is a member of the human family and is entitled to have his or her human rights protected in law.

The killing of the embryonic children because they are of the “wrong’’ sex represents not only an unjust discrimination against those embryonic human beings but also a violation of the fundamental rights of members of the human community. This is a crime against humanity.

Every child has the right to be accepted unconditionally. In having a child, parents are bringing into existence a human being whom they should seek to nurture, not to design or control.

Sex selection elevates adult choices to a higher ethical significance than the lives that are to be destroyed. Sex selection implies that the ability to choose is of greater ethical significance than what is chosen. There is no moral “right to choose” the sex of one’s child or, indeed, any other characteristic. Western society is obsessed with personal choice, yet some choices such as gender-selection carry social consequences for which we are ill-prepared.

Less democratic regimes will be tempted to promote discriminatory techniques such as gender-selection for economic and political reasons. Parental freedom and discretion could actually be undermined.

All forms of gender-selection take us further down the road to treating human life as a mere commodity to be bought, sold and thrown away at will. Children will increasingly be seen as lifestyle accessories. Gender-selection will probably lead to an imbalance between the sexes, as does abortion based on gender.

Even if embryonic children aren’t discarded because of their sex, they can still be discarded because of a suspected gender-linked disability. This sends a horrific message to disabled members of our supposedly caring society.

The state should not provide the legal possibility for couples to engage in sex selection. There are no methods of sex selection which carry ethical legitimacy since sex selection is ethically unacceptable.

Yes: We can help families without opening floodgates
Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director, Midland Fertility Services (www.midlandfertility.com)

I’VE delivered more than 1,000 babies during my obstetric career and the first thing the parents want to know is “Is my baby all right?”

Never has regret been expressed that baby is a boy rather than a girl or vice versa.

Finding out what gender the baby is is part of the joy of new parenthood, and most couples don’t want to even know before the birth, let alone choose.

One prospective dadŠ(a hearty rugby player who had visions of teaching his little boys how to act in the scrum but is now the immensely proud and doting father of four daughters) told me: “It would be like opening my presents before Christmas Day.” But, for a tiny minority of couples, the baby’s gender is important. You don’t need to be Henry VIII to realise having a son in some cultures is vital to the family’s economic and social survival. Where sons are responsible for caring for the parents and dowryless, unmarriageable daughters are just extra mouths to feed, sex selection is practised by the brutal methods of termination or even infanticide. This is why in India the ratio of girls to boys has dropped to 85:100 in some states and why all the babies in the “dying rooms’’ in China are girls.

The situation in the UK is very different and sex selection on medical grounds, to avoid the birth of babies with sex-linked genetic diseases like Haemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, is generally recognised as excellent “preventive’’ medicine.

However, some couples become so depressed by their inability to conceive a baby of the gender they want that their psychological distress becomes a real medical problem. It would be perfectly possible to frame legislation so tightly that these families could be helped without opening the floodgates to designer families of a specific gender mix. In order to get a baby of the desired gender, couples would have to go through IVF with PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis).

This would cost £4-£5,000 and at best would offer a chance of pregnancy of only 30-50%. Given that half of all pregnancies in the UK are unplanned, I think it highly unlikely that more than a handful of couples would seek to go down this route

Every child should be a wanted child and my sympathy lies with the unwanted daughters (or sons) conceived because their parents were desperate for a boy (or girl) and weren’t allowed to access the science that would ensure that’s what they got.