Your right to choose?

[tinyjo]

[Poll #204849]

I've been listening to bits of the discussion about this following the confirmation from the HFEA that parents will only be able to perform gender selection for medical reasons (e.g. avoiding heamophilia), not personal, social or "so-called family balancing reasons" but I'm afraid I'm finding that this is one of those questions where I'm not entirely sure what to think. On the one hand, I've heard very few good arguments against gender selection. Many people seem to have a gut reaction against it, but I don't understand why. This encourages me to align it in my mind with the many other scientific debates where the public have ill-informed objections. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can see good reasons for allowing it either. I don't think, for example, that it should be available on the NHS for non medical reasons.

The one reasonable person I heard speaking against it argued essentially that gender selection gives you an illusion of control which, if it doesn't work out could be damaging for you and the child. So for example you chose to have a girl because you have a certain perception of the way girls are. If your child turns out still not to be like that (perhaps she's a tomboy, for example) then your disappointment will affect you as a parent and the development of your child. This makes sense to me, but is it a strong enough arguement to restrict choice? After all, there are plently of avenues available for the parent/child relationship to mess up. If you're fixated on having a girl and you have a boy, won't your feelings of dissappointment in that case have a similar effect?

So what do you think? And more importantly, why do you think it?

Comments

Hmmm, I hadn't given it any serious thought

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

But of course, the answer should be no, for a very fundamental reason -- basic rights. Specifically, "equality of opportunity" -- the equal chance to be born, no matter what sex you are.

The usual effect of selecting the sex of your child is that people chose sons, and for all that we love to think about the UK as this cosy, non-sexist place, I think (at the very least) we'd see masses of older sons and younger daughters, which will lead to a social shift, one I'm not sure I would be happy with.

Crude forms of sex selection already take place -- female infanticide in China is famous, of course (and the social crisis that has attended upon this) but selective abortion after discovering the sex of your child is extremely widespread (they'll even refuse to tell you the sex of your child in some London clinics). These are (of course) "nasty" while pre-selection of sperm is "nice" but both are based on the same decision -- that a boy is better than a girl (or vice versa).

Now, I'm not allowed to discriminate like that with the people I work with, and whenever I'm around young people, I'm also obliged to challenge such attitudes (and frequently have to do so). Should parents be allowed to discriminate in that way with their potential offsping?

Now, while I'm usually Pro-choice wherever having children is concerned, in this case I think I make an exception. Chosing whether or not to have a child (whoever they might turn out to be) is one thing. Chosing to exercise control over so fundamental an aspect of their individuality -- quite another.

I'm also speaking from a personal view. My Dad wanted a boy, and would have been able to bully my mum into following his decision. So that's me scratched out. How about allowing sexual selection in the case of genetic disorders? Well, that's my friend Colette's son scratched out.

And we may not be perfect or quite what our parents wanted, but they love us anyway, gender and life expectancy be damned.

You lead us to the next important problem we have...

[applez.livejournal.com]

first a comment:

And we may not be perfect or quite what our parents wanted, but they love us anyway, gender and life expectancy be damned.

Or not love as seems all too often the case(s)...

As for the problem:

The odd mixture of political rights given/denied to children.

Here's one approach: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm
and it's application has various shortcomings.

On the opposite extreme, we have life rights being granted to fetuses in the US, and I don't think that's quite right either.

Re: You lead us to the next important problem we have...

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

"Or not love as seems all too often the case"

My father expresses his love very pooorly; he would still claim he loved me and be telling the truth, however -- this is true of many abusive people. Whether or not we should deny abusive parents the right to have and/or raise children is another issue entirely.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is good background reading to this sort of debate, yes.

Re: Hmmm, I hadn't given it any serious thought

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

the equal chance to be born, no matter what sex you are

But in that case, there's already an imbalance - it's, what, 1.1 boys for every girl? Something like that. And it's probably because sperm are different weights, so there's an inbuilt advantage for boy-sperm. Small, but it's there. Should we be correcting that and trying for a 50/50 birth rate?

The usual effect of selecting the sex of your child is that people chose sons

On an intellectual level, I'd be absolutely fascinated to find out whether this is still true in this country, what with the regular articles about how boys are failing and girls are succeeding. It probably is, I guess, but I'd bet it's not as extreme as it would be in, say, China.

Should parents be allowed to discriminate in that way with their potential offsping?

No, but I think the solution, as elsewhere, would be to challenge their attitudes, not to remove the option of choice.

1.1:1 M:F eh...

[applez.livejournal.com]

Interesting to consider that in light of longevities and general health advantage of women.

+0.1 to deliberately cover losses to ill health, bad habits, violence?

Brutish calculations maybe, and lacking in elegance, but...

Re: Hmmm, I hadn't given it any serious thought

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

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.

Puritanically yours... :-)

ah, the inbuilt advantage for boys because they're bigger/heavier/stronger

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I find that's just something you have to cope with -- in the womb as elsewhere. Girls are a lot less likely to die early as a result of violence and more resistant to disease, so it evens out. (actually, I don't know what the current stats are on this, so I'll withdraw from this argument now)

Would people in the UK still chose boys? We both thought "yes, but not always" ... I think there are probably better ways to find out than making pre-birth sex selection universally available, though. A web survey, maybe ;)

challenge the attitudes, don't remove the option Yes, well now. In an ideal world there would be no laws and we would all just do the right thing. But until then ...