Sex selection in the US is still legal. But what do the experts say?
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High-tech sex-selection methods have stirred hot debate in the medical community. Some doctors think it’s a great way to balance families, while others think we’re heading down a slippery slope.
Mark Sauer, a fertility specialist and the program director at the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care at Columbia University in New York, thinks that sex selection for family balancing is unethical and has no place in fertility treatments.
‘I can’t endorse the destruction of normal human embryos because they happened to be of the wrong sex,’ he says.
Not all fertility doctors agree with Sauer. While the American Society for Reproductive Medicine officially opposes PGD for nonmedical reasons, it acknowledges that sex selection shouldn’t be condemned in all cases and doesn’t favour making it illegal.
Low-tech sex selection has not sparked the same controversy, probably because these methods are far from foolproof and the assumption is that couples practising them are investing less – bot...
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