Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Gender Selection



There are infertility clinics in Hawaii that do gender selection. Gender selection involves picking the sex of your baby, filtering the x’s and y’s of the sperm, and presenting the appropriate sperm to the egg. This may be old news to some people but I was not aware that this could be done for $400-$600 dollars. I knew the technology was available but I did not realize that it was so affordable. For couples that have had two or three children of all the same sex and who want to have another child in hopes that it will be the opposite sex this technology is a blessing.

There are some traditional people who are still trying to accept the fact that you can find out the baby’s sex before birth. Gender selection is way beyond what these people can undertake. Some say that just because we have the technology does not mean we should use it. Another argument is that this taking God’s power into our own hands. There is concern that doctors are messing with nature but if you take this technology away then you should also take away infertility treatments.

Infertility treatments are used to help infertile couples having babies. A couple options are IUI or IVF. Both of these options involve using technology, outside nature, to conceive a child. There are so many couple who can not have children and this technology makes it possible for them. Therefore I support these acts even though they are unnatural.

  

2 comments:

  1. Another argument is that often infertility is the natural way of weeding out weak and unfavorable genes. By circumventing nature's natural selection, we weaken the gene pool, and thus shouldn't circumvent its ruling. How do you respond?

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  2. I actually agree with letting nature take it's course. There is a lot of talk about overpopulation and that can be dangerous. Although, I must mention that there are cases where people use IUI or IVF when it is not a natural reason they can't have children. For example, if a man has a vasectomy in his twenties then realizes in his thirties that he wants children. He can either get a reversal (under 10 years) or Sperm extraction (over 10 years). If they use sperm extraction in conjunction with IVF to make a baby I don't think this goes against natural selection because (assuming he was healthy prior to the vasectomy) he would have been able to have a child.

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