Is choosing a baby’s sex wrong?
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Gender, Health Care, Legislation, Religion, Science, TechnologyThe British health minister, Caroline Flint, included the idea among others proposed in a review of health regulations.
Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a “clear and specific ban” on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.
Allowing parents to pick sex for reasons such as “balancing” the make-up of their family could be the start of a “slippery slope” to designer babies, she warned.
There are plenty of other things in the article that could spark a discussion, but for the moment let’s focus on this.
She’s talking about fertility clinics. What she proposes outlawing is any method of screening eggs or sperm for desired characteristics — gender, hair color, whatever — before implantation.
My question is: why? Why is this the government’s business? Why should anyone care? If they’re only going to implant a subset of the eggs anyway, why shouldn’t they be able to pick which eggs?
And if they use a technique such as sperm washing, which occurs prior to fertilization, there’s even less reason for anyone to care.
I can see one long-term concern. By allowing us to select for specific traits we could end up harming our species’ genetic diversity, become something of a monoculture genetically speaking. Which could have large ramifications down the road, from susceptibility to disease to the ability of our species to survive calamities. But that would require mass selection for a small number of traits. So the concern is more theoretical than real.
I recognize that some people have religious or moral objections to interfering with the reproductive process. But I don’t see what the government’s interest is here.
Thoughts?
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July 13th, 2006 at 1:23 am
Here maybe the “government” is representing “us.” Our collective — what do they call it? — yuck factor? Our unease that our power and choice are going too far, becoming Faustian, and will have unintended consequences. I wrote here about the extreme Catholic position that the human will should not interfere at all in the solemn business of “who gets to be here, when.” To say that a woman’s (arguably God-given) judgment that she is not ready to become a mother is a less valid factor than, say, some involuntary hormonal imbalance preventing pregnancy strikes me as an extreme mistrust of the human will. But there are reasons to mistrust it. The fear that we will eugenicize ourselves, and breed for tall, blond, blue-eyed, ambitious heterosexuals, is not an idle one. Even if you don’t believe in God, you should believe in the salutary effects of Chance on the human genome.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:43 am
You maybe right that the government should not play a role in regulating such decisions, and that mankind must enter freely into a state of moral righteousness. However, this decision may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. We already have institutionalized eugenics in Europe, whereby the unborn who are diagnosed with Down’s syndrome or deformities are encouraged to be selectively aborted, and newborns with terminal diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis are euthanized.
We are entering a brave new world where humans are considered chattle, and value is determined not by the simple fact that we are human, but rather how we can perform. Selectively choosing the sex of your child will certainly open the door for choosing other genetic characteristics, such as intelligence, as soon as that technology becomes available. The consequences will certainly be a new class warfare, not one based on libertarian economics and meritocracy, but rather 2 different species resulting from selective breeding. The best and brightest will be descendant from families who could afford to genetically modify their children, and the less fortunate will be the progeny of every one else.
The more I think of this, the more I have no problem with the government making an outright ban on these procedures.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:52 am
I can see one valid reason for public (government) concern over people choosing the sex of their children. Consider the places where it has happened (albeit with different methodologies). If you look at China (abortion and/or infanticide due to a combination of the One-Child Policy and a cultural/economic preference for sons, to assure support in old age) and India (similar methods, somewhat different motivations), what do you see a couple of decades on? A lot of young men who are finding it impossible to find wives — no, perhaps, a huge percentage but certainly a large absolute number.
Why is that a concern for anyone but them? Turns out there is a growing body of research indicating that unmarried young (under 35) men are vastly more likely to engage in violence — whether crime, war, or terrorism. (NOTE: that is “more likely” NOT “certain,” but odds still matter.) Which impacts the rest of us.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that sex selection is MORE of a concern than the “designer babies” that the Health Minister is worried about.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Well, all seriousness aside, I would like to be able to choose only boys because my mom says that one day I’m going to have a little girl just like me, who will be an evil little brat to me like I was to her.
Maybe TMI . . . .
I’m also not good at doing hair, playing house, playing with dolls and teaching how to properly apply make-up.
July 13th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
WJ, that’s a good point. But I really don’t see that being a problem. Neither Britain nor the United States have the “boys boys boys!!” culture that China did, nor the strong economic incentives that underlay it. There might be a slight preference for one gender or the other, but overall I think it would balance out — and remember that we’re only talking about people who care enough to go through the trouble and expense of artificial conception. That will always be a tiny minority.
I like Jimmy’s vision — mostly sci-fi like mine, but plausible — of a world where the haves genetically select themselves to be increasingly superior and thus entrench the divide with the have-nots. But that seems a long way down the road, and assumes that the haves will *always* be the same folks. I think you’d end up seeing a lot more genetic mixing between the haves and the have nots, thus muting and perhaps mooting the overall effect.
July 13th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
If I had had the opportunity to choose the gender of my second child, I would have chosen another daughter. After three years of raising one, I was confident I knew how to deal with daughters. A boy would have meant starting over at the bottom of the learning curve.
Luckily, Nature heard my plea. :)
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July 26th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
I agree with you. What does the government got to do with it? It is the couple’s decision. They both will decide what they want whether undergo all those artificial procedures.