Sex Selection Essay

Abstract

Sex selection is any practice, technique or intervention aimed towards increasing the probability of producing a child of one sex rather than the other. The desire of parents to choose the gender of their child has a long history in cultures dating back to Ancient Egyptians and Early Greeks. The earlier believed that women with certain facial complexion are more likely to give birth to boys, and the latter believed that the sperms in the right testicle are responsible for giving birth to males[1]. Hence, the male would tie his left testicle during sexual intercourse. Nowadays, with the advancement in molecular biotechnology, it is now possible for parents to select the gender of their child with high success. There are a number of

Here the male and female sperms are artificially inseminated inside the mother’s uterus or IVF after separating the X-chromosomes (female) from the Y-chromosomes (male) by the gradient method or flow cytometry method. In the gradient method the sperms are placed in dense liquid and centrifuged. Whereas, in flow cytometry X-chromosomes and Y-chromosomes bearing sperms are stained with a fluorescent dye to differentiate the DNAs. Because X-chromosomes are bigger than Y-chromosomes, they take in more dye and consequently light up more brightly[2]. This sperm sorting technique is called MicroSort, which costs around $15,000 - $20,000. However, MicroSort is no longer used in the United States. It was disapproved by FDA in March, 2012 because “ there is no public health benefit in offering gender selection for non-medical

This arguably the most controversial issue of gender selection technology. On the one hand, it satisfies the parents desire to get a boy or a girl and eliminates parent’s gender expectations problems by raising a female like a boy or a male like a girl. After all, there is an irrefutable biological difference between males and females. And it provides an opportunity for families to balance the ratio of males and females in each household. This will allow every member of the family to experience growing up with a sister/daughter and brother/son. Consequently, an individual would grow up with appreciation of both genders. Some cultures have religious or economic incentive to prefer one gender over the other. For instance, after the Chinese government legislation to limit each house to one child, numerous families – farmers in particular – preferred to have a boy to work the lands. This gender preference led to an increase number of abortions and burial of female babies in China. A similar behavior is observed in India, where prenatal test is conducted followed by abortion if the child is female. Also, parents sometimes have a strong preference for having a son to carry the family name and inherit family