Sex selection

Hi bloghearts, how are you doing? Having a good week I hope. It's graduate seminar week in school and 2 topics, besides mine, have gotten my attention. We'll discuss one today.

Sex selection allows parents of a non-existent foetus choose its sex. It may be done for medical reasons as in a situation where there is a risk of a parent passing a serious genetic condition to an offspring of a particular sex. It can also be done for non-medical reasons such as family balancing. The most discussed method, which is a form of IVF and has been legalized in the U.K., is the pre-implantation genetic diagosis (PGD).

It sounds brilliant, yea? You can wish for 2 daughters and 2 sons and have just that without having to pray and involve God. No please. Anyway, sperm and eggs are harvested and brought together. One or more "foetuses" of the desired sex are transplanted into the woman and the others discarded. To me, it is tantamount to having an abortion. If you can tell the sex, it's not just a non-existent foetus. It has a right to life, just as an unborn child does.

The presenter seemed to be advocating for the legalization of non-medical sex selection for family balancing and other social reasons. A point she raised is that its illegality affects the economy adversely as couples with female children keep having kids in the search for a male child.

I have no problem with the medical reasons. However, In this part of the world, this "beautiful" non-medical idea  would have a consequence of an heightened level of gender discrimination against women, don't you think? There is already a discrimination we should fight and not fuel.

Family balancing is not bad but in Africa, people prefer sons over daughters. A man gave a testimony in church that his wife had delivered a baby. He had to come back to say it was a boy as if boys are better and the congregation cheered like boys are better. A mother of 3 boys usually locks "shop" and is content with her kids. Whereas, a mother of 5 girls would keep trying for a male heir, or an "arole" as Yorubas would call it, and in the process have kids she can't raise.

It's getting better now as people are more enlightened and understand that the sex of the child doesn't determine his/her successes. The introduction of this family balancing technique would bring back the slowly dying discrimination with a big bang. I don't think the answer is legalization of the practice but enlightenment of people that children are wonderful gifts from God whether male or female, with neither being inferior to the other. Maybe when that is achieved and people are not pressured into having male children, we can think of legalizing sex selection for non-medical reasons.

Thanks for reading guys, Anuoluwapo. So what say you?