Prenatal Gender Selection and Its Implications to Our Future

Prenatal gender selection is an issue that has been raised by the new technological advances in science. Parents can pick and choose the sex of their children based on their needs. They have they choice to have balanced families are all children of one sex in cultures that prefer one over the other. This sounds great as an idea, but realistically what effect will this have on society?

In this paper I will argue that prenatal gender selection is wrong. Prenatal gender selection is defined as choosing the sex of your offspring for personal reasons before it is conceived or by aborting fetuses that are found to be the undesirable sex. This can also include choosing the embryos to be implanted by in-vitro fertilization, abortion after the sex of the fetus is established, or the killing of a newborn infant because of the gender being undesirable (Robertson 2). I will develop three main arguments to support my thesis. I will start by showing how prenatal gender selection discriminates against the gender that is chosen to be terminated, it causes imbalances in the sex ratios, and it kills innocent human beings. I next consider and refute possible objections to these arguments, then conclude with some final thoughts.

My first argument is that prenatal gender selection discriminates against the sex of the child that is being terminated on a gender basis. Discrimination is huge global problem. Prenatal sex selection and infanticide practices all tend to favor healthy males (Hudson and Boer 6). All countries in the world no matter how progressive are seen to have gaps in equality for females (5). The idea that male children are wanted more than female children shows the discrimination and bias against female offspring (6).