Designer Babies: Selecting The Sex Of Your Child Now Legal
Posted by daroldcuba on Saturday, Aug 07, 2010
… in Thailand.
Sorry “western world” folks – I’m sure we’ll get our ‘choosing-our-baby’s-sex’ rights back soon. Hopefully by the time I’m ready to have kids. I mean, if gays can now get married, I’m sure reversing outdated mundane laws like choosing the gender of your own baby can’t be too far behind. Right?
And actually it is technically legal to choose the sex of your child in certain western countries, but ONLY if it’s to avoid passing a genetic illness to a child:
Some doctors, governments and religious leaders have spoken out against high-tech gender selection. The Roman Catholic Church opposes PGD because it leads to the destruction of embryos, which are seen as human life under church teachings.
Germany has some of the toughest laws against gender selection, prohibiting the practice in all cases. Some European nations, such as England, Spain and France, allow gender selection if a parent carries a gene known to cause inherited illnesses in children of a specific gender, such as sickle cell anemia.
In the United States, high-tech gender selection is legal. However, many doctors will only perform these procedures to avoid passing a genetic illness to a child. Ethicists fear that the technology could be used to create designer babies, leading to the destruction of large numbers of embryos and creating an imbalance between the number of girls and boys who are born.
Eh, that’s not too hard to get around.
_"CNN":http://www.cnngo.com/bangkok/life/creating-thailands-designer-babies-899751 via Life123.Filed under:
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