It is possible to find out the gender of the baby long before it’s born, or even before it is implanted into the womb in the case of IVF (fertilising an egg outside the womb, then putting it into the Mother).
To tell the sex of an unborn baby you can do an ultrasound to have a look (but you can’t tell until later on in the pregnancy) or you can look at the baby’s DNA. A boy has an X and a Y chromosome, and a girl has two X chromosomes (strands of DNA).
At the minute, the laws in Australia say that it is illegal to choose the gender of your baby (not sure about the laws in other countries). One exception is if there is a family history of a genetic disease which only affects boys, or only affects girls. Then you can choose to have the opposite so that the baby does not have the disease.
I think this law was made to make sure that we keep a ‘natural’ balance of males and females.
Aimee’s right – there are ways of telling what gender the baby is before it’s born.
But deciding what the baby is and making that happen – much more difficult. There are lots of stories (sometimes called “old wive’s tales”) that say things like if you eat ham on a tuesday when you conceive a baby it’s more likely to be a boy – stuff like that which is almost certainly nonsense.
And Aimee is right, yes, that you can choose the gender of the baby by using IVF and then choosing the gender you want. I also imagine that something is known in medical circles of things you can add to eggs that might influence whether an X- or Y-carrying sperm cell gets in. But that would be very expensive, and, currently, illegal. I would guess it’s also not particularly simple, and that you have a risk of damaging the baby by doing that, but I’m guessing.
But then you come to the ethical question of whether you would want to do this. Why? If we start choosing gender, and we going to choose other things too? You get into a dangerous area called “eugenics” when you start wanting babies to have certain features. I have (had) red hair – would have been a bit sad if my parents had decided they didn’t want that. 🙁 Part of the beauty of having a baby is that you don’t know, and can’t really control, what happens. It’s so much more important that a baby grows up loved, well-fed and happy than whether it’s a boy or a girl.
There have been some studies that indicate that might be possible to separate male sperm from female sperm, and therefore by using sperm that carries the chromosome for one particular gender, choose the gender of a baby.
As Aimee and Matt have pointed out, there are serious ethical and moral issues involved here. I have not heard or read any report of anyone actually selecting a baby’s gender.
It is possible to find out the gender of the baby long before it’s born, or even before it is implanted into the womb in the case of IVF (fertilising an egg outside the womb, then putting it into the Mother).
To tell the sex of an unborn baby you can do an ultrasound to have a look (but you can’t tell until later on in the pregnancy) or you can look at the baby’s DNA. A boy has an X and a Y chromosome, and a girl has two X chromosomes (strands of DNA).
At the minute, the laws in Australia say that it is illegal to choose the gender of your baby (not sure about the laws in other countries). One exception is if there is a family history of a genetic disease which only affects boys, or only affects girls. Then you can choose to have the opposite so that the baby does not have the disease.
I think this law was made to make sure that we keep a ‘natural’ balance of males and females.
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Aimee’s right – there are ways of telling what gender the baby is before it’s born.
But deciding what the baby is and making that happen – much more difficult. There are lots of stories (sometimes called “old wive’s tales”) that say things like if you eat ham on a tuesday when you conceive a baby it’s more likely to be a boy – stuff like that which is almost certainly nonsense.
And Aimee is right, yes, that you can choose the gender of the baby by using IVF and then choosing the gender you want. I also imagine that something is known in medical circles of things you can add to eggs that might influence whether an X- or Y-carrying sperm cell gets in. But that would be very expensive, and, currently, illegal. I would guess it’s also not particularly simple, and that you have a risk of damaging the baby by doing that, but I’m guessing.
But then you come to the ethical question of whether you would want to do this. Why? If we start choosing gender, and we going to choose other things too? You get into a dangerous area called “eugenics” when you start wanting babies to have certain features. I have (had) red hair – would have been a bit sad if my parents had decided they didn’t want that. 🙁 Part of the beauty of having a baby is that you don’t know, and can’t really control, what happens. It’s so much more important that a baby grows up loved, well-fed and happy than whether it’s a boy or a girl.
0
There have been some studies that indicate that might be possible to separate male sperm from female sperm, and therefore by using sperm that carries the chromosome for one particular gender, choose the gender of a baby.
As Aimee and Matt have pointed out, there are serious ethical and moral issues involved here. I have not heard or read any report of anyone actually selecting a baby’s gender.
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