Sex Selection

Gender selection procedures create a variety of questions for medical ethics - quite apart from the objections of people who would say that any kind of artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization is wrong, being against God's will. You see - what many people don't realize at first is that all scientific and therefore more reliable methods of gender selection - involve some form of artificial insemination.

Religious and moral medical ethics Many people through religious or moral medical ethics would say that selecting the gender of the baby which is allowed to develop to a full-term pregnancy is wrong under any circumstances. It leads the way open for 'designer' babies. Some countries do not control the access of prospective parents to gender selection procedures; the medical ethics of some countries' medical associations only allow this gender selection on the grounds of a serious medical need to select gender in order to prevent a genetic disorder which is shown to be prevalent in a particular family.

The medical ethics of gender selection become more complicated when you consider whether to use pre- or post-conception gender selection methods. Let's deal with the most controversial of these methods first: that which takes place AFTER conception i.e. when the ova has been fertilized and become an embryo and therefore a potential human life; in fact, many people would say that life begins at conception.

The medical ethics of post-conception gender selection What should medical ethics have to say about post-conception gender selection procedures? These invariably involve rejecting i.e. destroying, embryos of the gender which is not desired - or which display signs of some kind of abnormality. The fact is that these embryos, since they are fertilized, are the beginning of human life. This fertilized embryo could - in the right conditions - become a baby.

The medical ethics of pre-conception gender selection Some of the methods of pre-conception gender selection have little in them to worry medical ethics; they are concerned with the diet that the prospective mother follows or the sexual position which is used. Apart from the fact that these methods are not one hundred per cent effective and therefore raise the risk of producing a child of an unwanted gender, there is little in them to bother medical ethics.

Slightly more controversial than these simple natural methods of gender selection are pre-conception methods of gender selection. They do not involve creating and destroying unwanted embryos. What may be rejected during this process are sperm which carry the male or female chromosome which will in time and through fertilization determine a baby's gender. They are not a baby nor do they have the potential to become a baby. They are what fertilizes the ova and the ova then develops into an embryo and then a baby.

Yes, some people will still see the medical ethics problem that this is 'playing God', but for prospective parents keen to avoid a congenital abnormality in their next pregnancy, pre-conception gender selection offers a real chance of success without the medical ethics problem of discarding other, unwanted embryos.