Who Benefits For Gender Selection？

• parents who already have one child or children of one sex may choose sex selection to select for a child of the opposite sex. This scenario is called family balancing

• parents who risk transmitting an illness to a child based upon the sex of the child

Gender Selection Overview

The sex of a baby is determined by two chromosomes called sex chromosomes. Eggs from the mother carry an X chromosome, while sperm from the father carries either and X or a Y chromosome. If a Y chromosome sperm fertilizes the egg, the embryo is male (XY). If an X chromosome sperm fertilizes the egg, the embryo is female (XX).

In natural conception, about half of all children are boys and half are girls. In order to be more certain of one sex or the other, embryos need to be created through in vitro fertilization (IVF). A few cells are removed from the embryos, the DNA is amplified, and the 23 pairs of chromosomes are determined, including whether the embryo is an XX (girl) or XY (boy). The preferred sex embryo is then transferred into the womb. The technology to remove cells from an embryo to determine the chromosomes is called preimplantation genetic screening (PGS).

When gender selection is used to prevent a genetic disease, the process is called “medical gender selection.” In sex-linked diseases, genetic diseases are inherited via the mother, and only male offspring are affected. This type of genetic diseases includes muscular dystrophy and hemophilia, among others. Parents who are carriers of these genetic diseases may want to reduce the risk of having affected children by having female babies only.

In other cases, conditions are more severely expressed in one gender (Fragile X syndrome, Autism, etc.) than the other. Parents who are carriers of one of these genetic diseases can choose to have babies of the gender associated with a less severe form of the disease.

Sometimes prospective parents turn to sex selection when they have a strong desire to complete or “balance” their family according to their own personal plans. There are also cases where a couple feels a psychological need to have a child of a certain gender, either because they feel better equipped to raise a child of that gender or because they want to avoid gender-specific disorders of family.