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| No | 79% | 702 votes | Total: 885 votes | |
| Yes | 21% | 183 votes |
No
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Add to FavoritesGenetic favoritism is a live hand grenade that can cause severe damage to a country's population, culture and future success. The Chinese are perhaps the best example of this. Most Chinese couples desire a baby boy rather than a girl, which has raised questions as to whether the Chinese population will suffer an imbalance in the coming years. With such a huge influx of males vs. females, it is reasonable to argue that the country's large population will be dealt a severe blow. The only alternatives are multiple male partners per female, effectively turning them into breeding instruments, or interracial marriages. Since Chinese culture is so tight-knit thanks to a communist government, it is unlikely that the country will open its floodgates and welcome multiple nationalities with open arms anytime soon.
This is a plausible but very extreme case. So what about countries with more racial openness? While it could be argued that the desired ratio of boys vs. girls would be much lower, it still poses an ethical problem. Are potential parents who desire one gender over another guilty of favoritism? What does this say about their character? For instance, if a mix up were to occur during genetic manipulation, giving parents a boy instead of the girl they always wanted, would that couple love their new child unconditionally? Or would that child be looked upon with less than favorable eyes, or cast aside completely?
The world of genetic manipulation is an amazing door that we've unlocked in a very short period of time. However, the light behind that door can be so intense that it may blind us to the real ethical and moral questions we should all be asking. While I personally have absolutely no problem with genetically enhanced food or stem cell research, I am nevertheless concerned about how said research could be turned into a weapon for greedy governments, or a treasure trove for the super rich. Manipulating the sex of a child hardly seems as serious as the concerns mentioned above, but it does bring about a certain level of uneasiness for those opposed to the idea.
Perhaps Jeff Goldblum's character of Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park said it best..."Your scientists were so concerned with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should!"
Manipulating what has been given to us on our little planet Earth is just fine if done for proper and unselfish reasons. I can see no self sacrifice in genetically manipulating a child's sex based purely on a couple's personal preference. It's essentially the same as paying thousands and thousands of dollars for a certain breed of dog, while so many unwanted and abused animals lay in shelters across the country, just waiting to be adopted for no money at all. There's a certain stupidity to it all that clearly says something about the deranged mentality of the human race in our current century. Necessity has given way to greedy desire that is no longer of a material nature. When we begin manipulating the fundamentals of birth itself, we are truly on the threshold of losing all that it means to be human.
Learn more about this author, Derek Draven.
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Yes
I really should learn to stop responding to individuals who think my personal decisions are any of their business. Since I have a son, and my husband and I have talked about having another, we have been asked how many we'll be having. I want four, and my husband thinks two is plenty. I have mentioned more than once that I'd like a daughter, so, naturally, people ask what I'd do if the next one or two babies happen to be boys. I think they were trying to lead me to a mushy, gushy admission that I would accept and love any baby I had. While that is definitely true, I answered quite candidly that I have no problem taking my husband to a fertility clinic to have his sperm separated in a centrifuge so that we could have a girl.
I have been amazed at the negative response my admission has provoked. I have been admonished for "playing god," being shallow or selfish, for not loving my son, and for furthering the moral disintegration of our society. These accusations have ranged from simply laughable, to downright offensive. Of course I love my son. I wouldn't trade him for all the daughters in the world. However, I have always pictured my family with both a boy and a girl in it. This seems more balanced to me.
The feminist in me understands that it's wrong to think that I need to have a daughter to pass on my feminine traditions, and my husband needs a son to pass on his masculine ones. This attitude has certainly furthered many troubling issues that feminists are dealing with. A mother should share her love of dance with both her sons and daughters, just as a father should share his automotive repair skills with both sexes. But we all know that there is more to having children than simply passing on traditions.
It can also mean passing on diseases. Some genetic disorders are specific to one gender or another. If both parents carry a gene that gives them a 50% chance of having a daughter with a rare defect, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand why these parents would elect to have only boys. I think this is both the responsible and logical conclusion.
It's also logical to expect that parents who desperately want a son, but already have 3 daughters, to gender select for a boy instead of trying their luck and possibly expanding their family beyond their financial abilities. It's much more responsible to have two children, one of whom you gender selected for, and both of whom you can support and give every advantage to, than to simply keep having children until you have at least one of each gender and then cannot afford to give them a reasonable chance to succeed because your time and money are stretched too thin amongst your many offspring.
Unwanted children of either gender can sometimes be abused, as well. It has been documented in China, famous for its one child per family rule, that boys are more desired, and as such baby girls are sometimes aborted or, more rarely, killed after birth to give the parents another shot at the revered male child. China is not the only society in which these atrocities have occurred, but it is only fair to say that these actions are not the norm. It is much more common for an unwanted child to be simply ignored, abused or otherwise treated as inferior. I personally knew a man who was the only boy in a family with 5 children. His parents had only wanted a single, male child. Instead, they ended up with a large, female-dominated family. While they were never abusive to the girls, they were never given the same advantages as their brother. His college fund was full and he could go to any school he was accepted to. The girls were expected to pay their own way. The girls were sent to the local public school, while he went to an expensive parochial school specializing in college preparation. He was given an allowance and encouraged to study instead of work, while the girls all needed part-time jobs in high school. His parents bought him his first car even though his sisters had to pay for their own vehicles. The favoritism goes on to this day. Are his sisters loved? Of course they are. Their parents don't abuse or neglect them. But I would definitely say that their parents should have simply gender selected for their son right away so that they would not have brought four daughters into the world that they have clearly given inferiority complexes to. One daughter has been in and out of jail and has to deal with drug problems. Another has been through 4 bad marriages. Two of them had children at 18, and those same girls have multiple children, each with a different father. Our society does not need more people with these issues just because their parents didn't really want them.
The argument that allowing everyone to select for either gender they choose would unbalance the sexes, is flawed. It is a fact that the majority of parents gender selecting for a non-medical reason, are trying to have a child of a different gender than the one they already have at home. Most of these parents have a boy and want a little sister for him. And, all these years after this practice became available to the public, our birth rates are still 50% male and 50% female.
No child should ever feel unwanted. Anything we can ethically do to prevent this is beneficial. For those of you who believe that gender selection is "against god's plan," I offer this food for thought: This procedure is not 100% foolproof. People have selected for a boy and ended up with a girl, and vice-versa. What is meant to be, will be, regardless of our current scientific advances.
Learn more about this author, Sarah Grau.
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