subject: One Important Reason Why You Should Consider Choosing The Sex Of Your Baby [print this page] Most of us have at some time in our lives desired that we could decide with some certainty that we would have the boy or girl of our choice. Gender selection of offspring happens to be a quest of mankind for ages, not just from the time of the Greeks and the Romans.
Western countries are thought to have spent over a billion dollars in research of this kind. Old wives' tales and folklore have thrived on our desire to have the infant of our choice. The ancient Chinese are reported of having devised a system that was some 65 percent accurate.
However, why would anyone wish to select the gender of one's infant?
Any infant, boy or girl, is a gift of nature, and should be welcomed as such?
Over the years, various reasons have been presented for preferring an infant of a particular gender.
The most important reason, and the one which I strongly support, for trying to influence the gender of your baby at the moment of conception, is medical. Many disabilities are now recognized to be transmitted throughout generations via genes. Several of these disabilities are gender specific. For instance, a woman herself might not suffer from a gene-linked illness, but she will convey the disease-causing gene to her male children who will then be affected by the disease.
There are about 350-plus X-linked disorders (diseases that only male kids inherit), several of them fatal, like hemophilia, muscular dystrophy and X-linked hydrocephalus, and gender selection is almost a compulsion for such families. If the woman is a known carrier of an X-linked disorder, sex selection is the one approach to try and prevent passing on the disease to a male baby.
A few may accuse these couples of playing God. But couples trying gender selection generally have practical reasons for doing this. Quality of life turns into a concern for both parents and baby. For example, will the baby be indeed handicapped that he is in perpetual discomfort? What will happen to this child if the parents are not able to look after him? Can the parents' marriage weather the stress of raising a boy who'll require regular nursing and who'll never live a normal life?
The exact same argument of "playing God" could be used towards contraceptives and abortion?
One must make the choices in life that one thinks are important. Occasionally gender selection, trying to improve the odds in favour of conceiving a boy or girl as preferred, is a choice one must make.
