A change to national IVF guidelines could allow parents to select their baby’s sex to keep a gender-balance within their families.
Fertility specialists are pushing for a review of existing IVF laws: Parents should have the opportunity to choose the sex for their third child. Ethicists are skeptical.
Bob Phelps, Executive Director of Gene Ethics, holds a strict view against gender selection.
“It should not be allowed,” he said.
His main concern is with the social and cultural impacts of gender selection on a large scale such as in China after the one child policy.
“In China there are now 105 men per 100 women and the status and treatment of women is seriously degraded as a result.”
Under current law gender selection for non-medical reasons is prohibited in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. But desperate parents often decide to undertake the expensive medical treatment overseas. The process is similar to IVF procedures. After harvesting and fertilizing the eggs, embryos that show the certain sex indicators are selected and implanted.
Gender selection supporters argue they are not promoting gender bias by allowing gender selection for the third child. However, Professor of Health Law, Sonia Allan, is worried about the impact on children.
“Gender is not necessarily linked to sexual organs”, she said.
“If parents get to choose whether they want a boy or a girl, it puts additional pressure on the children to exceed those expectations. Especially transgender children who are not able meet mum and dad’s desires could be negatively affected and even rejected.”
A study by Gab Kovacs, Director of Sonoa Health, revealed a strong majority of the Australian community also disapproves of the use of IVF for sex selection. While 91 per cent of the participants supported the use of IVF to help infertile couples having a baby, only 20 per cent responded in favor of gender selection within IVF or for family balancing. Even less (17 percent) supported IVF only for gender selection.
