Today I came across an article on MSN on sex selection. The article covers the story of a mother who paid thousands of dollars to have a daughter. The procedure entails determining if the embryo is carrying XX or XY chromosomes. I was intrigued and wondered if any of you…
Have considered or would consider this?
Know someone who has done this?
Have any of you…after having 2 or 3 children of the same gender have sought other remedies/options to ensure the gender of your next child?
I read that article this morning and honestly, I felt for the amount of money that couple spent they could have just adopted a little girl. I get being disappointed if all your kids turn out to be the same gender (whether it’s all boys or all girls) but if it were me, I would turn to adoption before paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for a procedure that may or may not work. In all reality, if all my kids turned out to be the same gender, then I would just say, “Well, that’s life” and just enjoy the kids that I was blessed with in the first place.
I strongly disagree with sex selection, and this is coming from a girl who is terrified of having a boy b/c of gender disappointment.
I think its simply messing with nature, and some things shouldn’t be messed with. There are a certain amount of baby boys and baby girls born each year for a reason. It is not our place to disrupt the way natures happens.
When I have children, I would probably be sad if I had all one gender. But you know what? That’s life. That’s nature. If your heart truly yearns for the son/daughter you don’t have, there’s always adoption.
I also feel very uncomfortable about the fact that only the embryos of the desired gender are implanted and the unwanted embryos are discarded/destroyed. It makes me feel a bit ill, actually. I know they are still only cells at that point but I can’t help think of all the little boys/girls who never made it because mommy and dadddy wanted a son instead of a daughter, or vice versa.
I guess I can understand parents who do it because there is a disease in the family ie. female babies with haemophilia never survive, so I can understand how parents in that kind of position would want to ensure they were having a boy to avoid unnecessary heartbreak.
I just think its meddling with the laws of nature and in years to come we’ll find evidence that it shouldn’t have been done. I think we’ll be sorry.
I agree it’s totally against nature and if you really wanted a certain gender you shouldd adopt. Although that’s easier said than done. Above all you should be grateful for each child you are given no matter the gender.
The only reason I could see for trying gender selection would be to avoid some type of heredity illness in the family that affects one sex and not the other or something along those lines.
I think it’s going to become a very controversial subject in which everyone is going to have their own views and opinions and more will be heard as technology improves and it’s used more often
I agree. Is that allowed in the US? It ain’t here and I think that’s right the way it is. What people should know about it, is that this girl wasn’t just created somehow. There were boy embryos and girl embryos, they just implanted the girl embryos, the others got tossed. That’s how it works. There would have been boys, they just didn’t get the chance to live.
I feel like selection is always a bad thing. Nature does that, not us. I mean, we start with boy or girl, the next family wants a child without asthma and the next a child with blond hair and there we go.
[name]Just[/name] imagine how many of us or our friends wouldn’t be here if it would work that way. My friends mom would have had a boy instead of a second girl, my mom a child without allergies and so on and so on. Most of us wouldn’t be here today.
Also: Gender is soooo overrated. Boys can love dolls, girls can have short hair and love dinosaurs. If people would just let them.
I would never do that. It isn’t worth the money, in my opinion. It makes me sad to think that some couples are so disappointed that they will spend so much money to do that. Right now I have one son, and I would be happy with whatever gender we are blessed with in the future.
I agree that it is meddling with nature and should not be done. Technology is getting more advanced and we are meddling with things that should not be meddled with. This is my opinion though.
But how would the other siblings feel?! There was thousands of dollars spent to create the perfect sibling for them, would you feel unwanted because you weren’t that gender?
I think it’s disgusting that people would consider this so lightly.
I wouldn’t do that because I’m cheap and it does seem unethical, but I’ll admit after (a year or two after) I give birth to the boy I’m carrying, I plan to try out some old wives tales to conceive a girl.
I’ve said here before that I’d love to have all boys, but that doesn’t mean I’d be disappointed to have a daughter. All I want is a healthy baby. [name]Even[/name] if the sex really mattered to me, the most I would consider doing would be the Shettles method–timing intercourse to increase the chance of having one or the other, but I’d still take whatever I ended up with and rejoice.
The only circumstance where I could conceive of doing embryonic gender selection would be if I discovered that my children were in danger of suffering from some sort of sex-linked disease, like hemophilia. I think it would be worth it then, but just because I have a preference? No way.
I haven’t read the article but the fertility clinic that I went to for my IVF does gender selection for an additional $10000. I didn’t do that because I didn’t really care what gender I ended up with I just wanted a child but I don’t really think there is anything wrong with it. I think if you feel that you can only be a good parent to a child of a certain gender or if you have a slew of boys and or girls and really wanted the opposite gender that you should be able to make that decision. I don’t know anyone who has actually done it b/c you are talking about $20000 for both the IVF and gender selection and that doesn’t include meds but I certainly know people who would like to. In my mind no matter what you do with fertility txs God decides whether he sends you a child or not so you can go through all of the procedures but if you aren’t meant to be the parent of a boy/girl it isn’t going to happen.
My problem with gender selection is that it can be a slippery slope from something as “innocent” (in quotation cause it depends on how you feel about the subject) as gender selection to genetic screening and trait selection. Somehow it feels like it takes away from the miracle of IVF giving childless couples the ability to conceive. If you can then just say “sorry this one isn’t good enough, I want the other model” it becomes less about the miracle and more about perfection.
Nobody is perfect. But if we start screening for everything else, ie cancer, disabilities, physical attributes…etc we will miss out on some of the best things a varied society has to offer. And some of it’s most influential people. If their parents could have screened for learning disabilities [name]Albert[/name] Einstein, [name]Agatha[/name] [name]Christie[/name], [name]Leonardo[/name] Da [name]Vinci[/name], [name]Magic[/name] [name]Johnson[/name], [name]Thomas[/name] [name]Edison[/name], [name]Winston[/name] [name]Churchill[/name], Whoopi Goldberg, [name]Woodrow[/name] [name]Wilson[/name], and [name]George[/name] [name]Patton[/name] might not have existed.
Gender selection is excellent if there is a genuine medical genetic issue which needs to be avoided. Other than that it is extremely naive to choose gender for a personal whim. The person selecting the gender is assuming the child will fit a stereotype, that in itself is madness.
People like me spend top dollar just trying to GET pregnant on IVF. If the people who are so desperate to select a boy or girl could walk a day in my shoes they might realise that ANY baby is a miracle and blessing regardless of gender.
My fiance’s parents went through trial and error to get a daughter. After my fiance was born his mom said she wanted a daughter. [name]Martin[/name] was followed by 4 boys. She finally had a daughter. A year later they contemplated adopting another girl. Shortly after researching they concieved their second daughter.
My fiance and I have talked about this simply because of his family. He wants at least one of each so we’ve decided to have two children and if they happen to be of the same gender we want to adopt one of the other. If we have one of each we still want to adopt another child. @emiliaj: I agree on the medical/genetic issue. If I carried a serious (affecting quality of life) x-linked genetic condition I would be much more concerned of the gender of my child. As it stands I have a mild issue (color-blindness) that doesn’t affect you in anyway you can’t work around so my future son(s) will have to learn to adapt.
As to the couple in the article, I can imagine how their sons feel. All the money time and effort to get a daughter. And the poor youngest son, he’s only there because they thought he was girl! Poor kid. I wouldn’t want to spend $40,000 on something that may not work. They could have saved so much money and time if they adopted.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the eggs that are discarded are fertilized correct? That, to me, is murder. I believe in life at conception, so gender-selction would be totally off the table. This coming from someone who has only been praying for a gaggle of little boys. If I get a plethora of daughters, well, I’ll take it God was trying to teach me patience and acceptance.
Yes, that is correct. There was a really good documentary on a UK channel a few months ago, called “8 Boys and Wanting a Girl”. It followed a UK couple as they made their 3rd attempt to have a girl, after having 8 boys. The 3 youngest boys were only born because the mother had thought they were girls.
Anyway, they went to the US and had her eggs fertilised in a lab, and the doctors implanted the female ones. When asked what she wanted done with the male eggs, they offered her the chance to have them donated to a woman with no eggs so she could have IVF. She declined, she wanted them to be destroyed. And so they were.
It made me feel physically ill that not only did she refuse to have any male eggs implanted, but she wouldn’t give a childless couple the chance to be parents either because she insisted they were destroyed when they could have been donated. Why would she destroy her eggs when they could have brought joy to another family? It was very uncomfortable viewing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Actually, stripedsocks is correct. If you know anything about [name]Edison[/name] past what they teach in elementary school, you know that he wasn’t so much a great inventor as a great businessman. In most cases, [name]Edison[/name] didn’t actually invent things (such as the light bulb) but would take someone else’s invention/idea, tweek it, then get a patent on it so he could make money off of it.
Medical problems aside: [name]IMO[/name], nature is the only dictator of the world. It’s science after all, and science says there is a 50/50 chance you will get a girl or a boy – egg cells have XX, sperm is XY, so two combos have to be XX and the other two have to be XY. It’s an exact 50% chance, so that the world’s population has a more or less consistent proportion of half girls, half boys. And nature hasn’t just done that for the fun of it – it keeps our species going. It seems silly to go to such lengths to alter all this. I reckon you can want something but still just be happy with what you get. In very remote areas in some countries, baby girls are left to die so there aren’t as many women, which leads to bride kidnappings. That’s why it shouldn’t be tampered with – socially, it’s dangerous.
Arguably, this is all pointless. Because if [name]Edison[/name] hadn’t been born and therefore hadn’t stolen the light bulb, do you honestly think no one else would’ve? Invention is an ongoing process – yet people are always looking to attribute it to one name. And some people decide it should be their name. Sad, true, and nothing to do with [name]Edison[/name] in particular being born. If it hadn’t been him claiming it then it would have been someone else I guarantee you. It’s not like [name]Edison[/name] came into the world with full intention on stealing the lightbulb anyway.
I don’t think it’s wrong but I wouldn’t do it myself. The reason is very practical - I think it would be hard to ensure a balance of genders if people were able to choose.
I don’t have a problem at all if other women want to have their own fertilized eggs destroyed. But if I were in their position I would gladly give out the male fertilized eggs. And again the sole reason is it would help balancing out the genders.
[name]Pansy[/name] mentioned adoption in the first response and that’s the way I would go every time if I wanted to get a specific gender. Like strawberry_shortcake, I really wanted a girl and I told my husband that if we had a few boys, I would love to adopt a little girl. I still view gender selection as “playing God” or “messing with mother nature” (which ever phrase you prefer), so I just don’t think I would be very comfortable considering that route. I’m not sure if I even personally know a couple who has considered doing so. To each there own, but it just isn’t for me.