The NYT certainly has been writing about our emerging brave new world of industrial procreative manufacture and quality control lately. Today’s installment discusses how a new blood test of the mom can detect gender at 7 weeks—without ultrasound that can bond a mother to her gestating child. So much easier that way to discard the unwanted wrong sex nuisance! Moreover, the wrong sex tissue bundle can be flushed away using RU 486 with no one the wiser! How wonderful that the whole eugenic process can be made less emotionally difficult for people for whom not just any baby will do.
IVF can also be used for sex selection. Pro lifers, we are told, should approve because it prevents abortion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/sunday-review/if-you-really-really-wanted-a-girl.html?
But clinics and some ethicists say this type of sex selection is more acceptable because it occurs before embryos are implanted, before pregnancy. “We’re trying to prevent the abortion,” said Dr. Jamie Grifo, program director for New York University’s Fertility Center. His and other clinics typically allow sex selection for couples with two or more children, parents interested in “family balancing,” adding a child of the opposite sex. “For someone who has two girls and wants to have a boy, so each sibling can grow up with brother and sister, what’s wrong with that?” Dr. Grifo said.”
It’s eugenics. Besides it isn’t where the destruction of human life happens that matters to pro lifers, it is that nascent life is destroyed.
I do think this is a proper area for law and regulation. I also think this is an area where medical conscience should be protected. No medical professional should be forced to be complicit in the eugenic destruction of human life.
