As a pro-lifer, I am against gender selection of course. But, it's not just because I find it horrifying that a woman would abort soley because it doesn't have the gender she wants. I also find it potentially dangerous for the child that may finally be born. If a woman desperately wants a girl, for example, and she aborts until she gives birth to one, what is the expectations of that girl? What is the actual reason the woman would literally kill to get a girl? Is she expected to be "girly"? What if she isn't "girly" enough? What if she's too tomboyish? What if this girl is the complete opposite of the mother? What if this girl wants to change her gender? What will the mother tell her? Would the mother guilt trip her? Will this harm the girl mentally?

Also, what happens if the doctors make a mistake? She wants a girl and even though she probably has already aborted males, she still ends up giving birth to a boy. Doctors aren't perfect. This kind of thing happens. What will she do to that boy? How will she treat that boy?

I'm too lazy to break this down to get to all the specific parts but you know I have to say, I wonder what happens if or when a child born after sex selection doesn't grow up to be the girl or boy their parents wanted.

That's a really deep issue, a child of sex selection coming out as being transgendered. That would be irony at its best but probably awful for the parents. But I've always felt that when you have children you have to understand these are tiny human beings, their own individual persons who, like we all once did, temporarily relies upon their parents for everything until they become independant. They will have rights, goals, dreams, ideaolgies that may very well be different than your own.

I'm pro-choice and am against gender selection. That would probably just leave us with a million guys and very few girls. I guess that would be good for girls, but very bad for guys.

Would gender selection be considered an entirely different debate altogether? The end result is an abortion , however if these abortions are specific to gender then like Nick stated, there is a possibility that girls or boys could seriously outnumber the other gender and or more dysfunctional families will arise when those children don't live up to their parent's view of what having a son or daughter would mean not just for their lives but for the child him or herself.

Or is it all the same conversation because at the end of the day gender selection is done via abortion and saying no to gender selection could be a slippery slope?

I'll post a link to the article in a few minutes, it isn't the first of its kind but the writer tends to spark a lot of controversary for his views.

It is kind of tricky. I do know of pro-choicers who don't like gender selection either. Abortion is for women who want to end unwanted pregnancies. But with gender selection, that pregnancy beomes unwanted only when the sex of the fetus is determined. The woman intentionally gets pregnant. She wants to be pregnant. She just thinks the fetus should be how she wants it to be (even though there is no guarantee) and if it isn't, she gets rid of it. She will probably try to get pregnant again. Pregnancy itself isn't really a problem.

Personally, I don't see how any woman can do this. The fetus has to be developed enough to see the gender. Women must not think about what their unborn looks like when getting the gender selection abortion procedure done.

But couldn't the same be said of women who intentionally get pregnant but find out the child isn't as healthy as she likes it to be? Not the fetuses who have fatal birth defects but the ones with maybe a hand or arm deofrmity, someone who may be born blind n one eye or deaf or hearing impaired. SOmeone who may be born with diabetes as opposed ot being born with cvm. They all start out as wanted pregnancies and then the mother or parent finds out the child has a *flaw* whether it be the wrong gender or the wrong defect that ends with the parents deciding abortion is better than parenting that unborn child.

However, in some cases, the gender selection is done in a fertility clinic before implantation. Does that make it better, at all even in the slightest than gender selection abortion? If so is it still acceptable?

This one's tough. I think it's bad for the family, the society and our species in general to allow gender selection, whether it be through abortion, embryo selection or fiddling with the genetics before birth. Males are overvalued the whole world over and we'd end up in a gender crisis. I imagine the few women that are left would be regulated like slaves and forced to breed so that the human species doesn't die out.

There's a reason nature sees fit to assign one gender or the other. I believe that places in the world with a higher male population than female wouldn't be in the pickle they are now if they valued females as much as males and nurtured offspring with xx chromosomes instead of trashing them.

Yes, gender selection as it pertains to abortion IS a hard subject, I admit. It's the one place where I feel I might suffer inconsistency, because it deals with deliberate, wanted pregnancies that become unwanted for no other reason than the set of chromosomes the offspring receives.

It's really too bad people still consider girls inferior. I've seen couples that keep the wife knocked up constantly in their insane efforts to have a boy. They don't take a hint after three girls and whether the woman's body or the couple's finances can take it, they just keep trying until they get that almighty penis-endowed baby. Sheesh.

Yeah, as a woman who knows a big women's issue in some parts o the world is that many baby girls are being thrown away or aborted simply because of that XX chromosome makeup that was in no way their fault yet somehow makes them undesirable.

The other part of me, the pro-choice part says that its not my place to judge the reasons why a woman aborts, even when I don't like them or agree with them by calling it wrong. I know women, SINGLE women who used IVF not because they couldn't find anyone to settle down with and co-parent but because they wanted to have a son and be sure that no matter what they had a son. That stung a little because I'd expect a man to want a son and a woman to want a daughter but when both want male heirs what's the future of women going to look like when we're all severely outnumbered because the women before had made the CHOICE not to give birth to little girls?

It's really tricky, a very slippery slope that I'm not ready to approach head on but would like a very open discussion about.

On the other hand if women outnumbered men it would still be bad for straight women because men would have a monopoly on the dating scene. There would be much more women to choose from and far less options for male companionship for women. As it is now between incarceration, marital status, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and life expectancy, women are already at a disadvantage on the dating scene because the number of available women outnumber the number of available men.

Sooo many variables here that would make it a communal issue/problem yet it is extremely personal for the parents or prospective parents at hand.

I think if a woman wants a child of the gender she wants that badly, she should look into adoption. Might as well since sometimes she may spend lots of time and money on trying to get that "right" gender.

Gender selection causes harm. Not only to the unborn child with the wrong gender of course, but to the born. The child eventually born could be affected because he or she may not meet the mother's expections of being that gender and the mother may resent him or her because of it. The mother may regret what she did, or she may become angry and disappointed for all her wasted work to get what she wanted only to end up with "unsatisfactory results". I see potential extreme unhappiness for all when it comes to gender selection.

Yeah, it would be just as bad if women outnumbered men (though some men might get a kick out of the idea of having multiple wives...ahem). I don't think that scenario is as likely though, given that there are few places I've ever heard of that values females more than males. In fact I can't think of a single country that does. I think the only way the risk of people choosing female offspring over males would be if there were some sort of anomaly that made everyone feel the opposite of how they feel now, if that makes sense.

Edited to add: Actually, now that I think of it, a larger ratio of females wouldn't be as bad as a larger ratio of men. Why? Because a woman can only produce one pregnancy per year and unless she's always having more than one baby per pregnancy, that isn't going to replenish the population very fast. Men on the other hand, can father several children in one year. Both could sleep with multiple people but the man is the only one that can produce multiple pregnancies within a year. Therefore if there were more women than men the problem could be more easily rectified than if the reverse were true.

But let's consider this, sex selection is abortion based so either the woman never allows the embryo to be implanted or she doesn't allow the fetus to further develop. If the trend was more females what would make anyone think women would *correct* this or that men would have unprotected sex and lose their heterosexual dating monopoly?

There is no gurantee of a restoration of balance without forced procreation on the part of both men and women because the semen would have to come from somewhere. More sex with more women would increase their chances of fathering a child and if the most men didnt want to be fathers there would be nothing stopping them from accomplishing that. Its easy for men to get vasectomies now.

This is all of course hypothetical though.

Another thing, what if the men left, for the most part, did not want to have children? Or most of the women for that matter?

I'm against abortion for sex-selection. I believe it's selfish and wrong. It's ok to WANT a baby of a certain sex (My parents were hoping I would be a boy!), but to actually remove a fetus just because it isn't the "right" sex, I see as a form of sexism. "We want a baby of *this* gender, so *that* one isn't good enough."

But that's being against a woman's decision to have a son or a daughter. I know a couple who recently put their daughter up for adoption and kept her twin brother. They didn't want a daughter but didn't want to risk reduction abortion taking the wrong fetus.

Now that to me really is wrong! If you abort a fetus because you don't like the sex, that's it. No one suffers. But how horrible to be born and to realise you were chucked in the bin because you were the wrong sex, and you have a twin you have never met that was kept? So you grow up knowing you were given up for adoption...you imagine your mother was a nice teenage girl whose parents made her give you up...when you're 18, you find out that no, your parents were apparently normal, middle class people who just didn't want you because you didn't have a penis.

I didn't judge them either way, they and their children are the only ones who will have to live with that decision. It was a closed adoption so I doubt the daughter would ever find out.


Theirs was a sticky situation, had they gone for reduction they risked the chance of their son being aborted instead. I don't know the stats or science involved to ensure the *right* fetus is aborted during reduction.

No, if a woman aborts a fetus because she doesn't like the sex, it is very possible that a child finally born with the "right" sex could suffer if he or she doesn't meet the mother's expectations of being that gender.

Also, what if the twin WAS aborted and the other twin found out about it? How do you think it would make that twin feel? At least with adoption, he or she can find his or her twin later in life. I don't think I would be happy if my brother was killed right next to me in my mother's body. I would wonder what made me more special than my twin to keep me alive. Just my gender? Disgusting.

[quote="NeutralUsername
No, if a woman aborts a fetus because she doesn't like the sex, it is very possible that a child finally born with the "right" sex could suffer if he or she doesn't meet the mother's expectations of being that gender.

Also, what if the twin WAS aborted and the other twin found out about it? How do you think it would make that twin feel? At least with adoption, he or she can find his or her twin later in life. I don't think I would be happy if my brother was killed right next to me in my mother's body. I would wonder what made me more special than my twin to keep me alive. Just my gender? Disgusting.[/quote]

You make excellent points, because at that point you know for a FACT that REALLY could have been you. So if you aren't boy enough or girl enough for your parents would they wish they had aborted you? No longer want you? Gender selection could be hard on the born children who find out about it whether the selection was made via abortion or adoption.