Sex selection at fertility clinics

Fertility clinics in the U.S. are offering a service beyond just helping infertile couples conceive a child.  They are also providing sex selection, doing in vitro fertilization and implanting only embryos of the preferred sex (nearly always male), throwing the other embryos (usually little girls) away.

From Kiley Crossland, Sex-Selection Services in Demand at U.S. Fertility Clinics – Christian News Headlines:

More healthy couples are using U.S. fertility clinics to help them with something other than conception struggles: guaranteeing their baby’s gender.

A growing number of clinics in the United States now offer a controversial service called “family balancing” or “nonmedical sex selection.” Fertility Institutes, a network known for sex selection services in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City, says nearly 90 percent of its clients have no medical fertility issues, but instead come from the U.S. and abroad to ensure their next child’s gender, The Wall Street Journal reported. For about $18,000, the clinic offers parents a 99.99 percent guarantee of their chosen gender and evaluation of all 46 chromosomes in the embryo for genetic disease.

The process, legal in only a few countries including the U.S. and Mexico, combines in vitro fertilization (IVF) with genetic testing to guarantee accuracy. Couples undergo IVF—the woman’s eggs and her partner’s sperm are used to create embryos. Instead of implanting right away, the embryos are first tested using preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The test is often used to determine if an embryo has any genetic diseases, but it also identifies the sex of the embryo. In the sex-selection process, only the embryos of the desired sex are then implanted in the woman.

“If people want to avail themselves of the technology, why not?” Joel Batzofin, medical director of New York Fertility Services, told The Wall Street Journal. “They’re not hurting anyone. They’re paying for it. [The American Society for Reproductive Medicine] thinks that it’s OK.”

Critics, however, point out that there are humans hurt in the process: the conceived embryos of the “wrong” gender who are discarded or indefinitely frozen.

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