Sunita Puri speaks with American doctors who have trudged through the ethical minefield of sex selection:
Dr. Daniels, based in Northern California, felt uncomfortable when a middle-aged, white patient of his wanted a daughter "for the pink and the malls," as he told me. "She seemed to think of this kid as a mail-order product." But what if this girl ended up being a tomboy, he wondered—or gay? How would this woman treat her child then?
Other doctors at his practice insisted that he "keep his own beliefs out of it." Daniels ended up referring this case to one of those colleagues and has since stopped offering sex selection services completely. Parents pursuing it may presume a child will turn out a certain way based solely on its gender, with poorly understood consequences for the child, mother, and family if the child doesn't. A shortage of women, Daniels believes, is not the only harm sex selection may cause. It's just what has gotten the most attention.
But in fact, as Hanna Rosin emphasized in her "End of Men" cover story last year, sex selection in the US has trended towards a preference for females:
In the ’90s, when [pioneer biologist Ronald] Ericsson looked into the numbers for the two dozen or so clinics that use his [sex selection] process, he discovered, to his surprise, that couples were requesting more girls than boys, a gap that has persisted, even though Ericsson advertises the method as more effective for producing boys. In some clinics, Ericsson has said, the ratio is now as high as 2 to 1. Polling data on American sex preference is sparse, and does not show a clear preference for girls. But the picture from the doctor’s office unambiguously does. A newer method for sperm selection, called MicroSort, is currently completing Food and Drug Administration clinical trials. The girl requests for that method run at about 75 percent.
Recent Dish coverage of sex selection here, here, here and here.
(Photo from a series by Sacha Goldberger, who captured subjects after and before jogging)
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