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Choosing
the Sex of your Baby - The Moral Question
Some
people oppose gender selection calling it an attempt at playing God.
They believe that nature must be allowed to decide whether you deliver
a boy or a girl.
But when you think about it, the issue is not so clear.
If you are seriously ill, if you have a major illness requiring surgery
or even an organ transplant do you just allow nature to take it's
course and resign yourself to slow and painful death, or do you go in
for treatment?
Do you support contraception, preventing pregnancy using
“unnatural” barriers or pills?
Do you think abortion is an acceptable option in any circumstance?
How is an attempt to influence the gender of the baby you are going to
conceive different from any of these?
Now consider the most important reason I have mentioned for gender
selection – preventing the birth of a child who is likely to
be born with a serious genetic disease.
Quality of life for both parents and child becomes an issue. For
instance, will the child be so handicapped that he is not only in
perpetual discomfort but is also fully dependent on someone for all his
needs?
What will happen to this child if the parents are no longer able to
care for him?
Can the parents' marriage weather the stress of raising a boy who will
need constant nursing and who will never live a normal life?
If the parents were to separate, who would take on the financial and
emotional burden of accepting and supporting disabled child?
Let me be honest here. I have personally never been able to accept the
idea of abortion. But if you ask me about abortion as a choice in the
case of pregnancy resulting from rape, I am not so sure of my stand.
Similarly, if you ask me about gender selection by using natural
methods that will improve the odds in favour of conceiving a boy or
girl, I am all for it.
But if you ask me about using only those embryos of the preferred
gender and getting rid of the others when using the IVF procedure for
gender selection, I am not so sure it is right, because I see it as an
abortion.
But then again, if this pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is used to
prevent the birth of a seriously ill child? Again, I am not so sure it
is wrong.
I guess these are moral issues that each one of us must decide on one's
own.
If you feel strongly about the moral issues involved, or have a comment
about my opinions here, please post your views here.
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