Actually, fewer boys than girls survive past the age of five years when the age-related statistics are adjusted to accommodate the effects of malnutrition in female children.
I can't see any reason, other than compelling medical reasons, for having the 'option' of 'choice'.
Nobody in this small group of 'pro-choice' folk seems to have addressed the question I posed earlier: what message do we send to our children if we tell them that they had to be the 'right' sex in order to be born? I honestly did want a daughter; I have a son; I am delighted, endlessly lucky, amazed, to have any child who is healthy after a difficult pregnancy and birth. Children who are not valued for themselves are cowed from an early age; I see children every day who because of their sex believe themselves to be inferiro and in some way undeserving and it is pitiable to behold.
I can't think of any personally-constructed desire for "choice" as more important than the joy and self-esteem of a child. I don't think adults should have an automatic right to a technology which inherently reinforces such soul-destroying tendencies. "For if anyone puts a stumbling-block before these little ones, I tell you, it would be better for him to have a milstone around his neck and be flung into the sea..." and I agree with that: adults have to be responsible beings, and society should not further encourage them to be selfish, self-indulgent, and petty at the expense of a child.
It is true that some people just prefer to have a child of one sex or another; but frankly, excepting compelling medical reasons, I think that's just hard cheese. We shouldn't always have everything we want.
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chiming
Re: Hmmm, I hadn't given it any serious thought
Date: November 17th, 2003 04:11 am (UTC)From:I can't see any reason, other than compelling medical reasons, for having the 'option' of 'choice'.
Nobody in this small group of 'pro-choice' folk seems to have addressed the question I posed earlier: what message do we send to our children if we tell them that they had to be the 'right' sex in order to be born? I honestly did want a daughter; I have a son; I am delighted, endlessly lucky, amazed, to have any child who is healthy after a difficult pregnancy and birth. Children who are not valued for themselves are cowed from an early age; I see children every day who because of their sex believe themselves to be inferiro and in some way undeserving and it is pitiable to behold.
I can't think of any personally-constructed desire for "choice" as more important than the joy and self-esteem of a child. I don't think adults should have an automatic right to a technology which inherently reinforces such soul-destroying tendencies. "For if anyone puts a stumbling-block before these little ones, I tell you, it would be better for him to have a milstone around his neck and be flung into the sea..." and I agree with that: adults have to be responsible beings, and society should not further encourage them to be selfish, self-indulgent, and petty at the expense of a child.
It is true that some people just prefer to have a child of one sex or another; but frankly, excepting compelling medical reasons, I think that's just hard cheese. We shouldn't always have everything we want.
Puritanically yours... :-)