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

Re: FYI, in practice now...

[applez.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's my own ideological bias, but the laws of supply and demand should eventually be felt. Mind you 20 years is only a generation ... one simply isn't going to see massive change in so short a period in such societies.

Ultimately: the ruling patriarchy will be forced into a hard choice between female betterment or social collapse. And yes, women will bear the worst brunt of this entire evolved situation.

----

I wonder how AIDS is accelerating these effects, and how things will turn out. I think the greatest tragedy we're seeing in places like eastern Africa is the lack of an indigenous government response to these challenges: like setting up social security networks to supplant familial links and traditions of polygamous marriages of (AIDS) widows to protect family resources.

Re: FYI, in practice now...

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

"the laws of supply and demand should eventually be felt"

You've actually answered you own point there. When women become a scarce resource, they become exactly that; a resource. Something you buy and sell, something owned, and any benefit goes to the owner of the chattels not the chattel herself.

The (worldwide) AIDS crisis is a different issue, but I'd point out that in most African countries (South Africa is a special case) both the government and NGOs are working very hard to respond to the crisis. It's not enough, of course.

I'm not sure what you mean by "AIDS widows" -- the result in the worst-hit places is that only old people and children (aged 0-9) are left.

Anyway, big issue and definitely off-topic.

Re: FYI, in practice now...

[applez.livejournal.com]

1. You make a good point about 'resources' ... however, I maintain that with sufficient pressure, even the most patient societies revolt. Women are people, and people *need* liberties. Abuse can only go so far, even when organised and traditional.

2. I don't think AIDS is necessarily so different, especially when it intersects with traditional social values. It would be nice to treat AIDS purely as the medical plague that it is, but that hasn't been the case in the First World, or the Third. 'AIDS widows' specifically refer to those infected women (infected by husbands) who outlive their AIDS-dead husbands, who may have AIDS-infected children, and due to social ties, may be married by the husband's brother. A practice fairly common in SE Africa, I've read. In the long run, the orphans and aged are badly impacted by AIDS, but in the short-run, a society's highest earners are killed, and traditional social values may perpetuate the infection. By the bye, as an infection fulcrum, the 'AIDS Widow' model applies to both sexes - and again traditional social values may perpetuate this problem. I brought this up, because there is all too often a failure by government to intercept infected survivours, and a failure by those traditional social orders to evolve to the new challenge sufficiently.

For example, with good information, women as these can (and have in some places) gather together to demand their own independent support - with primary interest in the children.