Pick a Sex, Any Sex
Some couples will do anything to guarantee a boy or a girl.
by Jeanne Sager
August 14, 2008
Requests are often cultural — Potter's practice is accustomed to patients flying in from China, a country known for its stringent population control laws and preference for male offspring. They're also coming from Norway, New Zealand and spots in between, where the desire for girls is high. PGD is currently illegal in a number of countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Saadat said making this science available prevents the sex-selective abortions (SSA) the United Nations Population Fund blames for at least sixty million "missing girls" in Asia.
Although sex-selective abortion is taboo in America, the procedure is legal, and a recent study published by the National Academies of Science established evidence of "son-biased sex ration" among Americans of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent. The study, put together by Columbia University economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund, said this is a very small part of the population. A 2006 USA Today poll showed eighty-six percent of Americans support a sex-selective abortion ban.
Meanwhile, Huntington, the largest infertility clinic west of Chicago, has at least 1,000 women using the MicroSort process each year and another 1,000 opting for PGD. Ninety percent of those parents are hoping for a baby girl.
To Potter and to parents who've made the baby they wanted — the way they wanted — it's just more proof that science can give women control over their own bodies.
One woman paid $10,000 so her little boys would finally have a sister.
But it's the rare topic that's brought together the extreme right and extreme left — one fighting for embryos left behind by PGD and the other alleging this technology will one day be used to curtail women's reproductive rights.
"This is an important litmus test of whether people believe in reproductive freedom or not," Potter said. "I think people should be able to choose for themselves. They're the ones who have to live with the consequences of accessing this technology or not accessing this technology."
Skye Emery would tell any mom in her boat to go for it. She had no medical reason for IVF, but she paid $10,000 to get the PGD guarantee that her little boys would finally have a sister. Instead they got two, and the Nevada family is now balanced.
She's been stung by criticism for her choice, so much so that she thought long and hard before sharing her story. In the end, she decided she had nothing to hide. "The criticism has been that I'm playing God, but it's not like I'm picking characteristics, hair color, eye color, personality. I didn't have to leave gender to chance," she said. "But we were just making a baby."
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Babble
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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