Is ethically and morally correct to choose the gender of a child before it's born?

Question

humans are able of choosing the sex in a future baby by chromosome manipulation. Is it morally and/or ethically correct for a parent to choose its future baby's gender?

Answer 1

Is it moral or ethical.....? Not really, though the consequences aren't quite as harsh in a modern nation as they would be in one where the culture essentially *hates women* (you know who you are, ok?).

But it isn't really relevant, as we are already screwing around with gender quite by accident, courtesy of pollution and genetically modified foods.

--First with the pollution....we already know that *everyone* in America has been exposed to PFOAs (one of the types of chemicals that is a precursor to Teflon), courtesy of _Science News_, as well as phthalates (chemical solvents and precursors to plastics found in Nail Polish and certain plastic wraps, among other things) courtesy of _Scientific American_ (and you can serach both of their websites by those pollutants as keywords, really, don't be lazy....I have the print magazines to back me up). And cancer risks aside, the main effect of these chemicals on unborn children, when known, is to feminize them, especially unborn boys.

And we know that radium and uranium, when they pollute groud water, also end up screwing with gender where they are present.

The end result? We are slowly seeing a lost generation of men and boys living that are essentially half-gendered, meaning their pollutant exposure in the womb has screwed them over, making their secondary sexual characteristics weaker than those of men and boys of prior generations.

--And with women? Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone....science says they can't detect it in milk, but the human body sure can....how many more cases of *freakishly precocious* breast growth in young girls (10 and under) do you need?

Not to mention the "golden rice" that has recombinant beta carotene in it, or the risks of getting genetically modified feed corn in your tortilla chips (as Taco Bell demonstrated back in '02).

The end result? Between the pollutants and the GM foods, we are also seeing a generation of weakened women and girls whose health is going to crap courtesy of premature maturation.

In effect we are splitting ourselves off into four genders, not just two, and not just on a social level the way the other greater apes do...

--fully healthy, developed men...rarer and rarer these days,
--demi-men, anatomically male but half-emasculate courtesy of a polluted womb, more boyish or androgynous (and the targets of social scorn and hatred) than manly,
--ordinary women, fully healthy and who mature normally on schedule, leaving their immune systems, heart health and intellect relatively uncompromised,
--hyper-women, who end up showing signs of sexual maturation anywhere from 3-5 years ahead of schedule and suffer for it with more heart failure, weaker immune response, and weakened intellect from premature puberty screwing it all up.

So is it ethical to pick your kid's gender? No. It wasn't right when the Chinese put pressure on families with their One Child laws to kill baby girls, it wasn't right in the 1960s when science discovered it could select gender with 95% accuracy by using a special centrifuge to separate X-chromosome sperm from Y-chromosome bearing sperm....

But we are letting it happen anyway in all sorts of unnatural ways. And letting our kids suffer the consequences.

Answer 2

Leave it to chance. There would be too many of one gender at one point in time, then the world couldn't provreate. Look at those cities in India that are all men, because parents killed off all the baby girls.

Answer 3

Morality is always a tricky area. We already maniupulate lifestock and animals for food and production, but clearly the human morality issue causes an uproar. Personally - I believe human manipulation is immoral - because nature generally runs its course for a reason, of which few of us know.

Answer 4

Well, I think that if we are smart enough to come up with the technology to be able to decide gender in an unborn child, then we must be ready to do it. I think of it as evolution. Just like animals we are evolving and growing more able to control our environment.
Sure it's not that way "nature" intended... Or is it?
Nature made us smart enough to develop this technique so it must be nature's funny way of moving us along...

Answer 5

Nope. It is only ethically correct when one decides to marry - and by that time there does not seem to be any doubt left.
In any case why on earth would one want to find out if his child is a boy or a girl before he or she is born?

Answer 6

I think nothing especially science is infallable,I think many things could go wrong so I think choice should not be a priviledge, I thiink we should be happy with a living breathing smiling baby,, regardless of any abnormality not created by us.

Answer 7

opening a can of worms here for the rightous to get on their soap boxes i think personally i like the suprise. if you have like 10 boys then maybe but if you only have 1 or 2 then why????

Answer 8

If you are already taking the liberties of conception that far, I don't see why choosing gender could be wrong.

Answer 9

I don't think that it is immoral, I worry that it would screw up the balance of our species. Statistically you're more likely to have a girl and there is a reason for that.

Answer 10

If God gave us the ability to figure out how do it, I don't think it shouldn't be considered morally wrong.