How Much Would You Pay For A Baby Girl?
A Canadian couple paid $40,000 just to make sure they had a baby girl.
They already had three healthy boys at home, but the mother always saw herself as a mother to a girl so they kept paying until happened. Sex selection is illegal in Canada so the obsessed couple had to turn to the U.S. to make sure their fantasy of having a girl came true.
I sure hope that kid likes pink.
According a very interesting article on Slate.com, sex selection is a $100-million business in the U.S. According to experts, most of the families that are seeking to choose the sex of their baby want girls. (Yes, girls.)
Slate reports: "data from Google show that “how to have a girl” is searched three times as often in the United States as “how to have a boy.” Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender selection patients."
It's interesting that people are searching for a little pink for their families. Is it because girls are perceived as easier? More fun? Because they will (I hope) take care of their aged parents in the future?
Should everyone be allowed to choose their baby's gender? If you are a hockey-obsessed couple, isn't it okay to pay the money to have a boy? What if you want to carry on your mother's name? Isn't it your right?
Sex selection uses PDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), which was developed to find chromosomal abnormalities in embryos. It can only be used on embryos created from IVF. It is not legal to use it for sex selection in Canada, but it is in the U.S. and doctors are reaping the financial rewards for offering it.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine is, rightly, concerned that sex selection is exposing women to unnecessary medical procedures and that the pressure on the child born from sex selection to fit into a gender stereotype could be damaging to them.
No matter what gender your children are, you can't fit them in a box. My eldest loves to read and to have long conversations, my second is extremely imaginative, my third loves to build. Those are their personality traits - their gender is second to who they are.
I have two boys and a girl so I am speaking from a position of privilege. As I have written before, we chose to have a third child and while we were hopeful for a girl, we were more focused on the health on our baby. We were going to have a third regardless of the gender make-up of our family.
It seems to me that choosing your baby's gender may give you an illusion of control over your child's personality and future. You can dress them in pink, but they may rebel and choose black in the long run.
What do you think about sex selection? Do you think it should be available for a price?
Want more chaos? Last year, I asked if a man could live on breast milk, because someone was trying it. I wonder what happened to him?
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