The National Health and Medical Research Council is apparently reviewing whether the prohibition on those undergoing IVF treatment selecting the sex of the (hopefully) resulting children should be retained. This guideline is part of “Ethical guidelines on the use of assisted reproductive technology in clinical practice and research”, a document last revised in 2007.
The ABC report quotes Professor Gab Kovacs as advocating an end to the ban; ACCESS Australia has, in the past, made submissions to the NHMRC on the guidelines suggesting that some of their members have requested the ban be removed, their 2004 submission makes the following claim:
There is no evidence to suggest that there is a significant preference for either sex where this (RM: deliberate sex selection) has been done in Australia or internationally.
This may well be the case with regards to IVF, and it may well be the case in Australia, at this particular moment in time. But it’s certainly not the case globally. Throughout parts of Asia, sex ratios at birth are highly skewed, with the relative scarcity of girls attracting the term “gendercide”.
As a society, I don’t think we’ve made any serious attempt to work through the potential societal consequences of allowing parents to choose the sex of their children. Is it a discussion that we should be having?
It’s a practice that carries the seeds of its own destruction, as China is beginning to find out. A fertile field for spec fic, though.
Sorry about the reproduction metaphors, but it’s hard to get away from them.
Can’t both views be right? That it’s probably not significant if parents in Australia select gender, but could be a major concern in some developing countries (though I’d rather deliberate genetic selection than abortion as a way of weeding out unwanted female children).
I think we can loosen the rules as long as a 1:1 gender ratio is maintained nation wide.
Maybe start with restricting gender choice to families who want to gender balance? E.g. A family that has 2 boys already can use IVF to produce a girl.
Gender balance though is just one issue of many, how soon before parents start asking for other traits to be selected for like height or eye colour?
There are genetic dispositions to various illnesses which might make for legitimate grounds for wanting to gender select your baby. For example, where boys in your family will be born with (or risk being born with) a certain illness. I wonder if you can currently use that as an argument for gender selection if you’re undergoing IVF treatment – it would seem worthwhile to me.
I would also like families to have the option to gender select for gender balance reasons. ie they already have a boy and also want a girl. How to avoid people skewing sex ratios? I don’t know. Certainly a discussion worth having!
Interesting comments, PC and Chumpai.
PC, I’m sure in a generation or two it will sort itself out in those societies, but we do live in the short run too.
The natural ratio isn’t exactly 1:1. It seems to be about 105 boys to 100 girls. In any case, Chumpai’s proposed rules wouldn’t necessarily maintain that ratio; the gender ratios in those societies with skewed sex ratios is far, far more skewed for second and third children than it is for first children.
Update to my previous comment – I should have read the ABC article linked to in your past before commenting! It answered my question – it *is* currently possible to gender select during IVF to avoid passing on genetic diseases.
Wouldn’t it be more unethical to constrain individuals’ use of IVF according to national ratios or priorities? I certainly wouldn’t like to be the parent who was told that they had to have a boy or a girl to bring up the quota.
Regarding sex selection in Australia, it seems to me that there’d be far less incentive for the population as a whole to select one way or the other, as we don’t have the same political economics of children as in China and India—the problem’s not just that parents want sons as things of intrinsic value, but because sons bring specific economic benefits like dowries on marriage, preference for land inheritance, wives to come into a household to look after the aged, and so on. The really unethical situation’s in the lack of economic power for girl children and adult women in China and in India, not in the birth choices of parents.
I remember reading an article about this in a weekend magazine some years ago and it showed that in the US (where there are stats), selection for girls was far more common than for boys, and that’s mother-driven; ie women who have two, three or four boys desperately want a daughter. (That’s leaving aside sex-selection which is designed to avoid a sex-linked chromosomal/genetic condition – though that’s often designed to avoid males too.)
I’m in two minds about it as I think that the desire for sex-selection is intrinsically based on (and reinforces) the notion of inbuilt gender differences.
On the other hand, I’m a believer in keeping moralism out of reproductive technology as far as possible. Many fertile couples use methods to try and influence the sex of their baby and then feel smug if they happen to get the sex they desire. Why shouldn’t the ‘unlucky’ ones use assisted conception, if they’re prepared to go through the rigours of IVF?
Parents make all sorts of sub-optimal decisions for and about their offspring without bringing the power of the state down on their heads.
Whether and what sex their offspring are to be may be just one more of these sub-optimal decisions.
It’s none of my business how my next door neighbours make this decision. I therefore don’t want the state to intrude either.
Some families have really strong genetic favourings of one sex or another.
My own immediate family (fathers group) has something like a 23 to 3 ratio of boys to girls.
Great for spreading the family name, sucks for my Auntie who had 5 boys before she got the girl she wanted (including twin boys).
I wouldnt support the idea on principle though, seems a step closed to that whole “blue eyed blonde haired athletic gened superbabies”, than I like.
While I share Nicola Roxon’s conservative discomfort with the idea of legalised sex selection, I struggle to find a rational reason as to why the state should have any business in the matter.
I suspect I have a tentative intuition that children ought to be loved unconditionally [note the ought in that phrase], and that having further say in their constitution somehow devalues that unconditional love. Perhaps someone has a more thought through contribution to make on this issue.
I think guidelines like Chumpai suggest would be a good idea though we would still have some skewing – eg families with two girls are more likely to ask for sex selection than families with two boys.
However, it may be better than the alternatives. As mentioned in some news articles some parents already just go overseas. And there’s old fashioned approaches as well – a male relative of mine has 6 older sisters. And I think for most gender-based abortions which are possible in Australia would be much less palatable than IVF gender selection.
I’m quite optimistic that gender preference that people bring with them when they immigrate to Australia will fade over the subsequent generations. There are real financial reasons for the preference in developing countries (cultural obligations for boys to support their parents in old age whilst girls end up having an obligation to support the parents of the men they eventually marry) that don’t exist in Australia.
I don’t get why they are doing this review so soon after the last one. Is this really the highest priority medical ethics issue today? Does anyone know what sparked the review?
I don’t think that sex-selection should be banned from IVF programs because sometimes families know that there is a high genetic risk for a bad life outcome if the foetus is male eg haemophaelia or muscular dystrophy
When a family keeps having daughters when they desperately want a boy child the upbringing meted out to girls 2, 3 , 4 and 5 can be very shabby. I agree that parents ought to love all their children equally but I can’t enforce it.
As the world watches the Chinese one child policy reach its 30 year mark we are seeing the dangers involved in gender selection and as much as Chinese families want a son, they also want their sons to marry and they are smart enough to readjust their society so that the care of the elderly isn’t the burden or responsibility of the eldest son’s family
The review is a lot broader than just sex-selective implantation, as far as I can tell. The last full review seems to have been in 2003.
Billie, there’s an exception for avoiding diseases which only affect one sex.
Robert, does that exception cover things that don’t only affect one sex but are more likely to affect one sex than the other?
Robert @ 3, humans have evolved to have a slightly higher male birth rate fro a couple of reasons.
Firstly, as children we are less robust than girls.
Secondly, we’re more likely to die in war or agricultural accidents before we’ve had a chance to reproduce ourselves than are women.
The massive skewing that’s happened in China causes equally massive social problems.
How could the State possibly ration for keeping the ratios approximately even?
“Sorry, we’re full up on girls here. Go find someone who wants a boy and come to an arrangement then get back to us”. ?
What about sex-linked diseases?
There was a rubbish article in the Sunday Age (well that’s tautological) going on about genetic screenign for a variety of disabilities. A family lost a little boy at age 3 due to a highly heritable genetic disorder, and underwent IVF and screening to prevent it happening again. The Age writer mused that maybe they shouldn’t be allowd to do that, since it’s all part of what makes us human. bet she didn’t have the courage to say that to the face of the family when she interviewed them.
Its all very fine to have a philosophical view on whether severely disabled babies should be kept alive. I will put more weight on the points of view of those families who have had severely disabled babies and I will support their access to better care for their disabled children and their normal children and themselves.
If parents can choose the sex, they why shouldn’t the be allowed to choose other physical traits like Mole mentions.
Are we going the ‘Gattaca’ route with this?
… and here’s the answer to my question:
“The five-year moratorium on the practice expires this year and the National Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing whether to continue the general ban.” (from a related ABC news story)
we are seeing the dangers involved in gender selection and as much as Chinese families want a son, they also want their sons to marry and they are smart enough to readjust their society so that the care of the elderly isn’t the burden or responsibility of the eldest son’s family
Gah. So the girl babies get eliminated from Chinese society until the men wake up to the fact that they need servants. And presumably they need their trousers ironed. PROGRESS.
well tropsmurf, that’s an interesting question. What a minefield, really runs into personal ideology quite quickly.
At the individual level I’d happily have the best of my and my wife’s heritable traits artificially promoted so that our kids represent a better mix of good things that we have going. Homo superior, why not?
But, on a social level, we (my missus and I) could probably afford it, and many parents who invest hundreds of thousands of dollars towards dubious benefits from private school education would clearly be up for it.
Meanwhile, poor and middle class kids would have their preventative health and early childhood education needs unmet – since us rich arseholes would all be (feeling) too poor from our expensive gene screening programs to pay our taxes. So the net social outcome would likely be worse, my obviously superior kids would find it harder and harder to get the good employees they need.
However, if there was subsidised free gene screening to select generally for or against heritable traits such as intelligence, empathy, depression, general healthiness, etc etc etc, and it was demonstrable that this was relatively risk free, there were limited adverse consequences, well why not? I do not fear the future in that way, I like the idea that we can release our genetic potential and somewhat direct or control otherwise random events. I do fear a future where there are two classes of beings, based on the social status/wealth of their parents.
Of course, that’s seriously sci-fi for the time being. But the time will come soon enough.
Billie, there is an exception where choosing a child of a particular sex would “reduce the risk of transmission of a serious disease”.
Nicely put wilful.
There would certainly be an advantage to be able to pick and choose some traits which I think most of us would agree on eg general health related, intelligence (however that is defined) etc. However I think you would run into disagreements fairly soon afterwards
Even now my understanding is that IVF is mainly user pays (happy to be corrected if I’m wrong), so wealth becomes a factor. I know people who are deaf who would be insulted to think that this is a trait that should be ‘bred out’.
Makes for a complex and interesting area, hopefully we’ll get it more right than wrong.
Professor Kovacs was on ABC 891 Adelaide this arvo. He said the process is an IVF process, that it is very expensive – about $15,000 and that IVF is physically and emotionally draining – which I can emphatically vouch for from personal experience when my wife and I attempted a second child.
This all tends to discourage people from using the process for frivolous reasons. However, a few reports on slightly elevated birth defects for IVF children makes me a little uncomfortable with UNnatural selection.
Tropsmurf, it’s “user pays” within a state-subsidised system. I suspect the state could well use that to say “we won’t fund anyone who does …” and move on. Regardless, the cost is only partly financial, and it’s not cheap however you look at it.
If you want to go down the “but they’ll just go overseas” route you’ll still need to draw the line somewhere, because the promises made overseas are already pretty steep and will only get stronger over time. So where exactly should we draw the “even if it’s available overseas” line? Sex selection? Eye colour? Intelligence? Height? Breast size?
Personally I’m happy to let other people perform the experiment… I mean, “use the technology”, provided it’s done with an acknowlegement that whatever the result the parents and the IVF provider have joint and several responisibility for the human(s) that result. I think it’s unlikely that we can stop the research, so let’s support it and the kids as best we can, and try to make everyone involved behave ethically. By banning some types of experiment, and restricting others. I think most selection setups are ok, personally, but modification needs a lot of thought.
I personally don’t see great validity in the argument for either banning sex selection for any reason or genetic selection.
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As for sex selection, what you’re really saying if you want to ban it is that the state should intervene in people’s choices that may have been done for quite rational reasons (e.g., money in China and India, perhaps a certain sex would make them happier etc.), and basically force them to be or to have something suboptimal (like being poor). The typical justification seems to be that society will fall apart if the ratio of men-to-women is high, but there’s no real evidence of this. Which places are falling apart where polygamy is practiced, for example? In addition, why does state get priority over the individual?
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As for genetic selection, this seems to be mainly driven by Christian and other religious moralists. Personally, I’m color blind, short sighted, had childhood asthma, have numerous alergies, poor digestion of fructose etc. . Now I can live with all of these just fine, but if I could get rid of them with a pill I’d take it tomorrow and no-one would complain. However, if I could fiddle my genetics so I didn’t have any of these to start with, somehow this is worse, even though I can’t see how it’s much different. In addition, even if my parents wanted me to have blue eyes and could have given me those, I don’t see any particular reason why anyone should have stopped them. It’s not like me having brown or blue eyes makes any real difference to myself or indeed other people. If my parents thought one of the other of those would have helped me in life and could have chosen it, then I guess I should have been grateful if they did.
There is also some evidence that a sex ratio that skews male can be beneficial to women where women have choice of marriage partner (as is now increasingly the case in India and China). A large number of males relative to females means that the males have to conform to female expectations in a relationship or they will not be able to form a relationship with any female; in short, women have scarcity power. The studies outlining this are in Tim Harford’s Logic of Life (2008). The economic principle in question is ‘the law of one price’, where identical goods on offer at the same time, in the same place, will go for the same price. When women have scarcity power, men have to do something to ensure that they’re not ‘identical goods’.
Which is one reason why India and China are changing so rapidly when it comes to the relationship between the sexes.
Of course embrio transfer could solve a lot of problems re too many oldies and if suitably super race oriented would provide a simpler ‘child of your choice’ option much in the same way as we produced a population explosion of angora goats in the early eighties. Yep, 6 billion people aren’t enough, so lets get movin’.
Bloody hell, even in China you can’t escape Tony Abbott it seems, Helen.
Wah! So many China old hands here at LP.
Don’t forget la, that the one child policy determined a lot of the selection pressure to have a male child.
Why male – well as we are still guided by veneration of our ancesters our very existence is seen to be as a group- you know , not focused on the individual ego type concerns of the westerner you know? So when a male is born the family name will be carried on – red envelopes all around!
Sure in the pre revolutionary days males were preferred but more for spiritual reasons than just economic. Sure money counts you know but not the only reason la.
Someone mentioned that care for parents also a concern but really more a hassle for the eldest son’s wife than for the son! And this not a uniform feature across China – some places the care falls to the daughters.Like in Guangdong.And not like we are all one big homogeneous lump you know – some people do la, some don’t.
This comment needs special response la – “Gah. So the girl babies get eliminated from Chinese society until the men wake up to the fact that they need servants. And presumably they need their trousers ironed. PROGRESS.”
See above. Plus we do have launderies which iron clothes before returning them to client.
And while the skewed ration of males to females is redressing some past habits the change in economic circumstances and the lifelong pursuit of education as a more or less standard and permanent cultural feature are the main forces driving change in the relationships between the sexes.
You know ,it’s also the money la!
If it helps reduce reproductive rates then I’ll vote for it. It is very common for people to try “one more time” to get a particular gender result they desire.
When I went in for the 20-week ultrasound of my second pregnancy, a big sign on the wall at our local hospital announced that they would not tell you the sex of the child unless there was a medical reason to do so. I am informed that this is not the case in other hospitals in Sydney, so I assume it’s something related to the local ethnic mix. (The hospital is also a centre of excellence in the provision of care and support to women who have been affected by FGM.) So no, cultural gender preferencing might not be fading quickly enough.
Gender-prefencing and other non-medical reasons for choosing one embryo over another are a frivolous waste of medical workers’ time and resources. If the rest of us can’t get babies to order, the wealthy should not be buying them.
So why not have the baby merchants offer a sliding scale? EG: a 20 to 40 percent markup for gender choice? That should separate the players from the shoppers.
Also is it just me but has this pub become awfully solemn and ernest of late?
It used to be about the lipsnigers. With guns.
In glossy leather boots.
Chookie @ 33 – the policy may just be reflective of the number of new immigrants in the area rather than cultural preference for gender being sustained over generations? And I’m guessing they’re relying on the people who care about it either not knowing or not being able to afford to go to another place to check the gender of their baby (in which case IVF policies are unlikely to affect them).
Chookie “Gender-prefencing and other non-medical reasons for choosing one embryo over another are a frivolous waste of medical workers’ time and resources. If the rest of us can’t get babies to order, the wealthy should not be buying them.”
I’m in 2 minds but this sums it up for me and since when did our kids become mere commodities to be owned and controlled in every way. Also I don’t like the idea of people playing god although I embrace scientific advances and see this evloving in future – I just don’t think society is ready or responsible enough for this yet.
During a debate recently about reducing government support for IVF I found *some* of the IVF couples to have an entitlement bent as well as a victim mentality and just plain selfish attitude. Don’t get me wrong I feel deeply for people that desperately want children and are unable to have them but I just don’t see why their ‘need’ trumps other’s immediate or life threatening health issues that may not receive funding. My suggestion that if the govt stopped funding after 3 or 4 attempts it may mean that they have to re-evaluate or perhaps downgrade their choice of car to afford it was met with vile and disproportionate hatred. Those are the type I would not be rewarding with more control.
Brave New World here we come
@ Rebekka comment 16 – only if it is life threatening, like the following:
Duchenne Muscular Distrophy
Fragile X
Haemophilia
Hunters Syndrome
Muscular Dystrophy
Sensory Motor Neurone diseases (list from the UK, probably similar here).
Something like autism that affects boys more than girls isn’t considerred life threatening as at it’s best it can be a social rather than health issue and there is an ethical minefield around selecting out possibly autistic embryos. I have heard that clinics overseas – US, maybe Thailand allow gender testing pre-implantation but it’s not something that I have researched beyond a bit of googling.
“Is it a discussion that we should be having?”
The discussion we should be having is whether anyone should be encouraged to have IVF and why the state should be financially supporting a dubious practice.
The most highly heritable characteristic any being has is the abilities related to being able to reproduce.
In reproduction and genetic sciences these are the most likely abilities to be passed to the offspring.
This scientific view is based on some assumptions that may be challenging to readers – for example if you acquire an infection which renders you less than normally fertile you have become less suitable to reproduce.You were genetically predisposed to get the infection and so less capable of reproduction. Supporting this person to reproduce increases the likelihood that the offspring will also have a reduced ability to reproduce increasing the need for further IVF work.And so on in snowballing effect.
These assumptions are very black and white in the approach which subsequently evolves.It leads to a conclusion that only the gentically fit ( a term meaning without negative characteristics)should reproduce.
Note that it has nothing to do with any characteristic an individual may exhibit phenotypically – like eye or hair colour, intelligence or athletic ability.
When people who aren’t capable of reproducing do so with IVF techniques it would be acceptable to me that they payed for all costs themselves but I would prefer them not to reproduce at all. They will only succeed in increasing the numbers of reproductively unfit people and divert attention and resources away from non elective problems.
If some respond to their situation by becoming mentally unwell then therapy would be needed and a reasonable expense for the state – it does however add another negative characteristic to their list of problems and further reduces their suitability to reproduce.
While what is written here can seem harsh and unkind genetics doesn’t answer to those responses- rather the science stands unchallenged but we as a society still feel that this situation is different and requires that on the one hand what makes for excellent peer reviewed articles doesn’t appeal to the individual or the sense that we should help others when they are infertile.
If IVF continues then whether the couple select a certain sex is relatively unimportant- their number is small in our general population.
Preferred sex selection could also get a boost once techniques isolating sperm likely to produce one sex or the other are made commonplace prior to impregnation by AI.
What is it people? Utterly frivolous parenting, or precursor to some paranoid nightmare spec fic health farming scenario? Both at the same time would certainly make for the more satisfying novel, but I’m intrigued this debate is simultaneously taking place at each and every extreme.
Sure – debate whether the state should subsidise sex selection – but why should it be *illegal* for those who are willing and able to pay for these procedures themselves. Nobody’s answered this satisfactorily. Just ’cause they’re (so-called) rich and if no-one else can afford it, why should they? Frivolous rich! But wasn’t the greater issue the huge swathes of poor people selecting sex and screwing with *our* demographics. Irresponsible poor! Which is it? ‘Cause they’re not fit to be reproducing anyway? Give me a break…and mentally try applying such a myopic misuse of Darwinian evolutionary theory to ag science and artificial fertilisation. ‘Cause we shouldn’t be playing God and we’re “not ready or responsible enough for this yet”? There is no God. We – so to speak – are as ready and responsible enough as we’ll ever be.
But, by all means, lets live as a species in fear of things that haven’t yet come to pass, and have no scientific basis for assuming will ever come to pass. This is not frickin’ nuclear proliferation or climate change we’re talking about. Nope, just our eternally superstitious mistrust in the personal choices made by ourselves, and our offspring – oops, I mean other people, and their offspring! The future sure is looking bright.
/end sorely needs a coffee rant
Sex selection via IVF is the beginning of designer babies. Once the technology is there people will want to choose all sorts of characteristics for their child. It is not okay and as a society we need to have the courage to stand up to those thinking that children are commodities and say, Sorry, no way. Does IVF sex selection mean that the embryos of the wrong sex are discarded? If so how is this different from sex selective abortion in China and India?
It is interesting too how many of the extreme pro abortionists are also the so called feminists who oppose aborting female babies in China. So I thought it was all about choice?? Funny isn’t it how these fake feminists can complain about this disgusting practice but then turn around and defend late term abortion for any other reason as a “choice”. Abortion is killing, full stop. I would be interested to hear how these so called feminists justify opposing a parent’s right to abort if the baby is female. Or will there be silence over this obvious contradiction.
“It is not okay”
Why? Do you really want to curse me and everyone else to genetic problems, no matter how horrible they are ? Do you really want the government to stop parents giving their children the best possible start to life?
Perhaps you need to bother God more, and not people like me that think it’s fine.
Hi Spana
I wouldn’t call myself a feminist but am very gratefull for the work they’ve done. I guess others would call me a feminist but there’s much more to it than that. I’m a humanist I guess, though I don’t like labels – it’s just that I’m a female to boot and share empathy with womens issues so others may seek to label me feminist.
I agree with your first paragraph but not the second – I am very much pro-choice (not so much pro-abortion as you put it – but if a choice is made to abort for good reason I support it). I don’t agree that abortion is killing – I believe the rights of the woman, you know the one that’s alive and kicking outweigh the rights of a globulous lump in her uterus.
My (soft) opposition to aborting female babies in China is on different grounds – it doesn’t equate to ‘choice’ – it’s about a system that is geared against them and they do what they have to to survive.
Hi Voxpop. I can see your argument but I do not believe it stands up to scrutiny and I do not believe it is consistent. I would make the following points in response.
1. You aregue that you are pro choice if the abortion is done for a good reason. What is a good reason? Is aborting a girl baby in China a bad reason but aborting a healthy baby in Australia because the mother and father decide they just don’t want it a good reason?
2. Do you really believe that all those who abort female babies in China or India don’t have a choice? Many are middle class and have total choice in the issue. They make a choice based on their views and values. I would argue that some women in Australia in abusive relationships who are pressured into aborting their babies sometimes have far less “choice” than the middle class Chinese or Indian couple who believe a male child will give them better status.
3. You describe an unborn child as “a globulous lump in her uterus” Premature babies survive at 23 weeks. Abortions are carried out far later. Is the premmie just a globulous lump? If you want to argue that it is okay to kill an unborn child do so with honesty. But please do not twist science and label it what it is not. A basic medical text will show you otherwise.
The sex selection of babies using IVF raises these same issues but in a less confronting way for people. Aborting a female baby or discarding female embryos in the lab are the result of the same mindset.
Spana
1. I’d say any good reason should be determined by the individuals involved in each case not by someone coming from a position of total condemnation ie. pro-life without any actual consideration for the lives that are affected.
A person in China does have good reason to abort a female child however the influences in that decision are not the same as in our society. That is why I said soft opposition because I do understand they face different obstacles.
People usually go on about women who are raped or have a foetus with severe abnormalities to justify choice (duh) however I’m much more willing to say plain and simple that if a pregnancy is unwanted the carrier should not be forced to go through with it. I did a lot of research back when Abbott banned RU486 and the majority of abortions are performed on women who were using contraceptives. I can very easily place myself in that situation (as a 40 year old who has never wanted kids and been on contraceptives since 16) if my contraception had ever failed I would have had an abortion. And I take it very personally when someone denies me the right to determine how I live my life and tries to control my body.
2. They make choices based on the society they live in. Not sure how many women are actually pressured to have an abortion by an abusive partner but I’d argue that this is not a good situation in which to bring a child so until that woman gets help or breaks away from the abuser I’d say it’s probably for the best.
3. You are the one talking number of weeks, funny that a pro-lifer would endorse medical science – I thought they opposed any cut-off date? I stand by my description of a globulous lump because I didn’t specify level of development. You are attaching sentimentality to a group of cells and using emotive arguement. I have not tried to twist science in any way and I take exception to your suggestion that I’m not being honest – I’ve been nothing but.
The motivation for IVF is a desire to have a child and the motivation for an abortion is to avoid having a child so I think that you’re jumbling issues.
“Do you really believe that all those who abort female babies in China or India don’t have a choice? Many are middle class and have total choice in the issue.”
Spana, maybe you should go and live in China or India, where the difference between a boy and girl might be the difference between retiring happily and sleeping on the streets of some smelly city. You might then realize that even middle class people worry about their futures and not being middle class in a lot of places, which makes their actions entirely understandable.
It is interesting too how many of the extreme pro abortionists are also the so called feminists who oppose aborting female babies in China. So I thought it was all about choice?
It would be interesting and puzzling only if you completely misunderstand, or wilfully misinterpret, everything the pro choice movement says.
Interestingly, I’ve seen some data sets from China recently indicating a growing preference for girls among the Chinese middle class (which is growing rapidly), with the very rich and the poor still retaining the traditional boy gender preference. As one would expect, this is more skewed among the poor. The rich can just bribe some overworked bureaucrat to get what they want.
Spana derails yet another thread with her anti-abortion rants.
I’m also in the camp that questions government support for IVF, particularly over multiple cycles. I’m aware that there are people who are desperate to have kids, but can’t. But, I also think there’s something a bit crazy about spending government funding on this when we live in a world with too many people. Plus, it’s often unsuccessful, so it doesn’t solve the problem of childlessness.
But, seeing as there is IVF, I don’t see that there’s a problem in using it to select sex.
With reference to the comment from SL one other feature which hasn’t been mentioned is the spiritual preference for a boy related to the chinese( not only chinese by the way ) cultural feature of ancestor worship.
While the one child policy was strictly enforced having a boy meant the family name would continue and as such your place in an ongoing line of existence was confirmed.
It isn’t an excuse which justifies gendercide but I think it made a considerable contribution to the preference for male children.
As the data sets SL mentions reflect a rising education standard and socioeconomic status among the middle classes so their fear of falling out of favour with their ancestors could be fading.
It just isn’t as simple as boy = money .
“It just isn’t as simple as boy = money”
That might be true, but boy = money is certainly by far the biggest factor. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have ever seen changes in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore etc. . There’s a good article in this week’s Economist on this topic incidentally here which shows that other countries are starting to do it to that arn’t just in Asia.
What the Economist article misses is that societies with excess boys do not tend to focus their aggression inwards. It does catch some of the Law of One Price issue I mentioned above, however; boys have to fight very hard to get the available girls, by saving a lot of money while women become greatly more liberated. What skewed gender ratios can do, however (and there is evidence of this with some ancient civilisations) is direct aggression outwards. Everyone from Aristotle to Polybius commented on the high status of women in Spartan and Roman society. Both societies were ‘filial piety’ cultures that preferred boy babies. Women within Sparta and Rome did well out of the deal, however.
It was, however, very unpleasant if you happened to be living in a country next door to them. You tended to get, ahem, conquered. They had to find something to do with all those excess boys. The military was as good as anything…
This is a great article that I read back in 2003 that sums up my issues with banning sex-selection. In particular, this final para:
I am doing IVF treatment right now, and somehow I don’t imagine I’d be the only such person reading this thread.
All I’ve got to contribute, other than a blast of withering scorn for the likes of Spana, is to go back to Suze’s comment and suggest we need to have a think about what gender preferences of any kind might indicate, and if we’re happy with the underlying attitudes they grow out of.
(Insert reference to Tony Abbott’s remark to the Women’s Weekly that even though his daughters are very nice, of course very bloke wants a son.)
I might also mention that IVF chances of success increase with every additional treatment cycle, rather than diminish.
Oh, and another blast of scorn for arguments about the cost of IVF making it a luxury item only available to the rich etc. Yes it costs a lot, but nowhere near as much as many other things we don’t specially regard as luxuries (new cars, etc.)
Well, I think that as a society we need to have the courage to mind our own friggin’ business and all drink a nice hot cup of STFU, but that’s just me. Spana, does the word ‘monomania’ mean anything to you?
Laura, all the luck in the world with it and I hope it isn’t bashing you around too much.
Well, thank you very much Pav. I am hopeful but also I honestly believe old enough to know that life without children would also be a fine thing if that’s how the chips finally fall. And it’s not too bad so far. When you work in academia you develop a usefully high pain and annoyance threshold.
@ Laura: I’d just like to say that Ive been impressed with your candour about issues that some might see as “private” (in that unhelpful, politically isolating way). Especially so for someone who’s not (fully) pseudonymous here.
This is not the first occasion I’ve though so either.
Good on you.
“Oh, and another blast of scorn for arguments about the cost of IVF making it a luxury item only available to the rich etc. Yes it costs a lot, but nowhere near as much as many other things we don’t specially regard as luxuries (new cars, etc.)”
Being “not-pregnant” isn’t a disease state.People aren’t ill when they can’t conceive as a couple or via AI as an individual.
It is possible to try and shut down debate about a person’s choice to pursue IVF by scorning others but there isn’t any justification for the public funding of an individual or couples’ choice to try and have a child.
This is the debate people shy away from for fear of appearing callous or harsh and offensive to the people trying to have children.Often people who have chosen to lower their chances of being pregnant by avoiding reproducing when they are capable of doing so.
Conversly I think the issue isn’t concerning a natural right and as the problem of infertilty isn’t a life threatening illness or crippling or painful chronic condition the people wanting children when they are infertile are pursuing a “luxury” and should fund the endeavour themselves.
If some can equate the expense as being similar to buying a car it shouldn’t be viewed as being prohibitive to their aim.
Cars don’t grow up to hold jobs and pay taxes Murph.
Whilst this argument is orthogonal to whether the government should fund IVF or not, it is a hopeless argument that gets bandied about for numerous different things like, e.g. bike-crashes. The lifestyles most people live make them susceptible to lots of different things, some chronic, and some non-chronic (ask any fat person). That doesn’t mean the government should help people deemed unworthy for some reason less in most situations. Should the government, for example, give up it’s quit smoking campaign and any help it brings because people bring the consequences of smoking upon themselves? Or should it give up giving pensions to people too lazy to save money for their retirement?
I think of this as something in a list of priorities of things the government could fund. Now personally, I don’t think they should fund IVF. However, that’s probably because I don’t think the government should fund many of the things it does, and I’d rather the government fund IVF than, for example, free public parking in most streets of most cities in Australia (a literally enormous cost). Once they get rid of free public parking (which blocks roads, makes cities bigger etc.) and other things which I think are bigger wastes of money, I’ll be happy to see them get rid of free IVF (which does essentially nothing to me except take my taxes) next.
Most likely. Having been through many cycles of IVF*, my impression is that there are WAY more people using IVF than admit to it. Second impression, contra Smurph, is that many of the people using it do so for age-related, not genetic, reasons – i.e. women and their partners are starting families later, when chances of natural conception are much lower. This is, like Liam’s astute observation earlier, a social and cultural issue, not a technological one. If you live in a sexist society, that society’s technology will often be used in sexist ways.
Laura, I’ve never met you, but I think you would be a wonderful mother, and I wish you all the luck in the world. It sounds like you have a realistic attitude to the process, and hopefully you’ve been offered all the available counselling. It is a VERY tough process psychologically. Trying for a baby can be an emotional rollercoaster anyway, but the drugs add a whole ‘nother dimension of hormonal mindfuck to the process. All the best.
Heh. Where the fuckety fuck is Harry when you need him?
*Admittedly, my bit was pretty small in the scheme of things.**
**Probably not the best way to describe my hand*** in it.
***So, yeah, OK, I just outed myself as a wanker.****
****Whaddayamean youse knew that already?!
@ Fyodor – in Melbourne, and we’ve had that argument countless times.
@ Laura, I second Fyodor’s comments and wish you all the best on your journey.
Thank you Lefty, Fyodor and Mindy. I agree Fyodor, far more Australian children are conceived with medical assistance than is generally realised. That’s individual people’s private business, and I didn’t mean to suggest people should out themselves. Far from it. I do think though that perhaps more recognition that IVF is a social good would be useful to bring into this debate, which began as specifically about sex selection but has perhaps inevitably turned into a general thing about the value of IVF per se.
Murph, with respect, the way you put things in your comment there is far too simple and doesn’t reflect the complex reality of what infertility is, or why people take up IVF and other forms of assisted conception.
Infertility may not be a disease or an illness, but neither are so many conditions which doctors treat – menopause, ageing etc. Pregnancy is not a disease, either. I don’t think the issue of whether infertility is a disease has anything to do with whether treating it should be subsidised.
Then there’s infertility as one of many consequences of syndromes which do have direct bad effects on health. Before getting to IVF I had a lot of treatment for one such syndrome, mainly because I wanted to get pregnant, but a secondary effect of the treatment was that other aspects of my health got better. It’s not so easy to separate infertility from health.
IVF isn’t free, by the way. Sure it’s subsidised, but out of pocket expenses per cycle are still around $2-3000. You also have to undergo a police check to make sure you aren’t going to molest your baby should you have one.
Did I say this already? on topic – if sex selection is permitted I don’t imagine it’d be used much, because it’d considerably lessen the number of viable embryos you’d have on hand to work with.
Laura wrote -”I agree Fyodor, far more Australian children are conceived with medical assistance than is generally realised.”
I wouldn’t doubt this at all and suggest that it reflects the use of IVF over the last 30 years among other factors especially the trend for first childbirth at ages greater than 30.
As I attempted to outline in my first comment the genetic viewpoint and analysis of infertility is very cut and dried.
If you can you do and if you can’t you shouldn’t.
Fear not Laura I am very aware of the complexities of reproductive science and the use of hormones and embryo transfer.As you comment the existence of other pathologies at the same time that conception is being pursued will affect the success or lack thereof.
Again and this is the difficult point for many to accept these are all considerations which indicate that conception shouldn’t be attempted from the standpoint of genetic fitness to reproduce.
If reproduction is a success in such circumstances then there is a greater chance that the next generation will be less than normally fit to reproduce.
Do you consider that creating a greater and greater number of people unable to reproduce without intervention is really a social good?
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I hope I don’t offend those using or having used IVF and am trying to comment delicately.
The individual instances are almost impossible to discuss without some offence but the point that I think is beyond challenge is that the use of IVF will surely lead to a need for greater amounts of IVF.
Those wanting children will often feel that the science should be used to help them.The pursuit of an individual gain to the possible detriment of society at large becomes justified and there is a section of the medical profession that views the specific case as more relevant than the effect on the population at large.Their actions lend support to the idea that IVF is not deleterious to the general reproductive health of the public when it is.
And Mindy I apologise – I can’t see the point you are trying to make apart form stating an unrelated fact.
I reproduce this comment of mine for Fyodor – “Often people who have chosen to lower their chances of being pregnant by avoiding reproducing when they are capable of doing so.” There are biological reasons why the young reproduce more successfully than the aged and they do so with a lower incidence of abnormality.
It’s natural.I don’t condemn people for the choices they make but would suggest that many choices are made without access to enough information about the consequences of those choices.
As I often say( about almost every subject ) more educational resources would help in this regard.
Do you also extend this survival of the fittest reasoning to other kinds of medical intervention?
“As I attempted to outline in my first comment the genetic viewpoint and analysis of infertility is very cut and dried.”
Given that number of children is negatively correlated with IQ, as is age of first birth, I’m not sure that’s a great argument. I’d rather have smart people using IVF than stupid people having 10 kids and claiming huge amounts of benefits for all eternity. If your argument was sound, I guess we should be encouraging more teenage mothers and not women over 30 who generally have a far better financial capacity to look after their kids (no offence to teenage mothers — mine was one). I might point out here too that your argument is a bit confused. Age and genetics are really different factors. You could exclude people based on either or both of those criteria if you wanted. I also can’t see how letting older women use IVF changes the gene pool at all, excluding for the tiny genetic mutations that could occur over a few years of life.
“There are biological reasons why the young reproduce more successfully than the aged and they do so with a lower incidence of abnormality”
Fat people have more trouble too (it’s true), and they must have some bad greedy genes also, at least for the modern world (and I won’t even mention people with Crohn’s disease, like the author of the article). Should we be particularly hard against them and helping them breed because of bad genetics?
I think there are some valid reasons for not encouraging *too much* use IVF (not that we’re there yet and the financial cost probably acts as a good enough barrier for now):
- We don’t yet know the long term affects of IVF conceived babies (and there recently have been some claims there are some problems). So a slow ramp up of its use seems prudent.
- If fertility issues are genetic are we going to have a self fulfilling prophecy where as its use increases we end up with even more need for IVF in the future.
- If we start doing too much filtering on genes on a large scale are we going to make some mistakes in accidentally excluding something which is important but we don’t find out for a very long time?
Laura – good luck with the IVF! My brother and his wife were lucky enough to a baby on their first try with IVF. Doing police checks for IVF clients seems a bit silly. Its not like they do that for normal parents….
That would not be of concern to people who don’t actually have trouble conceiving, but who are using IVF solely to ensure they get a baby of a specific gender.
The problems discussed here are related to reproduction.
The point I’m raising is that scientifically IVF is making the incidence of a problem more common.
Unfortunately the intervention in this situation is directly antagonistic to increasing the general populations’ ability to reproduce naturally.
Society has chosen to support this endeavour and it may be that the majority of our society feel it is a great thing.
It does carry within itself the chance that overall things will be made worse.
Isn’t an informed choice what we should be making?
“If fertility issues are genetic are we going to have a self fulfilling prophecy where as its use increases we end up with even more need for IVF in the future”
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“The point I’m raising is that scientifically IVF is making the incidence of a problem more common.”
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Try crossing out “IVF” and replacing it with “diabetes”. Perhaps we should stop giving out insulin, since those damn diabetics are breeding and passing on all those bad genes, and then their children can only live via human intervention.
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Other terms you might like to substitute in are “asthma”, “susceptibility to depression, schizophrenia, or any other mental health problem”, “poor biomechanics”, etc.
I had the same thought about folate and neural tube defects.
Yes, I do agree that an informed view of technologies like IVF is best, but I don’t agree with the implicit suggestion that a purely scientific view is informed. By itself, separated from the broader picture, it’s actually rather narrow.
Fitness to breed… Oy.
“I’d rather have smart people using IVF than stupid people having 10 kids and claiming huge amounts of benefits for all eternity.”
wow. that’s scary.
Conrad the comments made are about reproduction. They are not in any way related to discussions of disease treatment.
The uncomfortable truth about IVF can’t avoided by apppeals for understanding on a broader scale.Individual justifications are based on selfish aims.
And the terminology and jargon in genetics might sound harsh but ignorance of them only limits understanding…oy indeed. More reading needed before more uninformed comment…..blimey , we could be talking about climate change.
Murph,
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you sound like some fundamentalist that thinks everybody should do things for the greater, generally unknown, good. You also seem to think only perfect genes for breeding should be able to go into the next generation. Other genes, like those for asthma, short-sightedness, color-blindness, having feet that pronate too much, low intelligence, etc. are obviously just fine.
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So basically, it’s seems to me that what you think is that trying to stop people having kids for genetic reasons when the genetics of infertility are not well known (I believe up to 7% of couples have fertility problems, and they occur for innumerable reasons — not least of which these days are non-genetic reasons, like getting old), and despite the fact that everyone has something you could change about their genetics to try and make them better if you knew about the genetics (no-ones’s perfect). That’s basically hysterically singling out one group for the type of punishment no-one thinks of giving people in other groups, including ones that have genetic problems and where the genetic problem is known.
Sorry, the first sentence isn’t grammatical. there should be “is fine” on the end of the clause.
Conrad you last comment is very tangential to anything I have written about.
Just re costs arguments – meh: why do Australian govts chuck money and folks for having babies these days? I believe they’re worried about future tax base supporting us oldies.
IVF seems a reasonable investment by the state in that wider policy context.
People making comments on this forum that are against this ban being lifted, I want to know… what sex is your family made up of….. I bet your family is balanced with boys and girls! I would love future people commenting on here, to state at the top how their family is made up of what genders.
I honestly think that only people in my situation (ie. having 2 or more of the same gender) would understand the anguish we have to have the opposite sex and why we need to lift this ban. The people that are against it are entitled to your opinions by why does it concern you otherwise. How does this effect you???????
Let me start by saying, I know how lucky we are to be able to have children. I have two awesome little boys, and would not change it for the world… They are my everything and we dote on them. All 4 of us would love a girl to add to the family.
We have to undergo IVF anyway for our next child due to my husband having had Cancer so if it is an option to us at the time to select to have a girl then we would most certainly do it to balance our beautiful family.
The child that is born from sex selection would be loved so much like all other children. I think if rules are placed on sex selection for family balancing purposes then what is the problem with that… If you have 2 or more of the one sex.. why shouldn’t you be able to choose your 3rd childs sex, if the technology is there and you are willing to go through IVF and pay for it at your own expense. Bring it in with rules.!!! I don’t think you should be able to choose the sex of your first or even second child, unless there is a medical reason why you cant have a particular gender.
I have read on the net of instances of people aborting their unborn 3rd or 4th pregnancy due to it not being the sex that they are after… surely lifting this ban would stop this sad practice from happening.. Which Im sure is horific for the mother and family to go through but maybe that is their only option, not being able to afford to keep having kids till they get the opposite sex that they are after.
I know people that have 2 or more boys that would soooo love a baby girl and I also know those with 2 and 3 girls that would love to have a baby boy. Our family has 9 grandchildren, 1 of which is a girl. We all long for a daughter/granddaughter to be added to our beautiful family.
Please lift this ban. You will be making the day of those in need of this technology who have been waiting for this for a long time.
Here here… You said it in one! ‘Saint Furious of Ikea’. I wouldn’t say the people having 10 kids to get the sex of their choice are stupid though, maybe just desperate for the opposite gender… I understand their deseration, but yes, then they probably do need welfare to help them after 10 kids… Lifting this ban may very well help this country out financially in regards to this.