China

With the passage of time, some nations, such as China, have undergone overpopulation; however, thanks to technological advancements, scientists can now regulate overpopulation by altering the sex of an unborn child. High-tech selection and infertility treatment allow scientists to accomplish this. However, faith organisations such as Christianity have argued that it is ungodly, and countries such as the United Kingdom have banned the practice except for medical purposes. In comparison, what is seen as ungodly to some is a solution to most of the world’s problems, but can it really make life easier or look like another joke of humans trying to fulfill their ambitions of being sub-creators? What is interesting is the fact that this procedure does not seem to have any side effects for children in the future but has not yet been fully accepted. Ideally, parents should be able to make these choices, especially because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages by far.

Introduction

Any physician who is practicing should apply judgments and values to the career of medicine. Importantly, ethics or morality in medicine is a requisite in each and every field of the occupation. However, it becomes a totally different case when it comes to gynecology and infertility. People that are experts in selection argue that sex selection is an expression of rights in reproduction as it allows couples to make a family that is planned and well-informed. Additionally, they argue that sex selection helps to prevent abortion and results of unwanted pregnancies. Therefore, this minimizes child neglect and violence between intimate partners. This review focuses on the cons and pros behind sexual selection in the current world.

Body

Predominantly, sexual selection can help avoid passing sex-related disorders from the parents to the off springs. This means that the children will not be affected by what lives on in their family blood and they will have a completely healthy DNA from their parents. In simpler words, sexual selection can help improve the genetic health of a person. This is acquired by sexual selection acting as a sieve that filters out all the genetic mutations that are harmful. Surprisingly, scientists that have done sexual selection of people argue that individuals who have experienced powerful sexual selection in their lives are able to endure extinction when they are inbred and have a good amount of fitness compared to people who have not been sexually selected in their lives. Basically, people that have had weak sexual selection or none at all risk going extinct by the 10th generation with their health at risk of declining quicker. (Phys.org, 2017)

Interestingly, by using selection, scientists like Prof Gage, for one, have acknowledged sex as an important and the dominant form of reproduction as it permits sexual selection to stipulate these vital genetic beliefs.

Secondly, sexual selection can be used to balance families that are comprised of children of a certain gender for instance, all boys or all girls. It is quite factual that some of the couples that are married end up getting only children of the same gender. At times certain parents would want to have that type of relationship that they believe will only be possible if they have a child of a particular sex rather than the other. This however, does not imply that children of a particular sex are more superior to the other but it basically means that different sexes trigger different types of parent-child relationships. (Connor, 2017)

Luckily, through sexual selection they are able to change this and balance their families with children of both sexes.

Thirdly, sex selection has also proved to be a solution to sex ratios. For instance, in some parts of China it is reported that for every a hundred girls under the age of five years, there are more than one hundred and thirty boys. Sex selection will help control this problem and in return over population in countries like China and India will be solved. China has been the major victim of overpopulation and it has been forced to come up with laws that reduce the number of children that a family should have. In India for one, there is a cultural preference that is against daughters which actually has benefits since women in child-bearing moments are the ones who control the birth rate hence confining the population growth to any rate. Sex selection will enable Indians to reduce the number of women in their population hence controlling the population rate. (D. Vinod, 2017)

Last but not least, sexual selection will help avoid or reduce the number of abortions that occur currently. Most of the abortions that women have are motivated by the fact that they predict a child’s gender and it happens that they did not hope for that and they end up aborting the child. This usually happens in countries that have a very strong gender bias that shows its preference for boys to girls. (Guttmacher Institute, 2017)

Moral views concerning PGD from different groups and the cons behind sex selection

Even though sex selection has been scientifically proven to be helpful to the human race especially in the current world, it is no surprise that some of the people, countries and even religions have campaigned against it. For one, the United Kingdom has banned the practice and made it illegal except for medical purposes. This move has however not stopped people in the UK from travelling to the US and India to have the procedure. Christianity and the Catholic Church have stood their ground opposing the procedure of determining the sex embryos of an unborn child. According to theology in Catholic, it is considered practically evil and awful to use stem cells. Moreover, according to the Jewish law known as Halacha, therapeutic insemination for a pregnant woman with the husband’s sperm is the only option that is allowed. Christianity on the other side regards sex selection ungodly and that it should not be practiced.

Arguably, sex selection can be quite expensive unlike natural selection which is penniless. The process can cost up to $20,000. It provides no assurance as it cannot give accurate results unless one combines both IVF and PGD which will ideally cost a lot of money. Sex selection does not give a woman the element of surprise that comes when one gets pregnant. Most women feel the fun of guessing the gender of their unborn children as they get on to feel the surprise later when the nine months are over and they give birth. With sex selection one looks forward to getting a baby of a particular gender and that joy that comes naturally cannot be experienced. With sex selection on the rise there is a high risk of having a population that is highly comprised of males than females. This is due to the fact that most parents would prefer having their first born as sons rather than daughters. An example is in Hungary where a survey was conducted and it was revealed that 87% of the 1500 partners interviewed wanted their first born kids to be male. In contrast, this means that sex selection which is meant to be a solution to the gender imbalance between males and females will in other way become a problem rather than a solution in the long run. There will be more males than females in the future if all of these families undergo sex selection and this will automatically lead to more problems of gender imbalance.

Conclusion

Sex selection can be more of a problem solver than creator when it is done under the right decisions. With problems such as overpopulation and abortion on the rise, I believe parents deserve the right to choose what is best for their children for the greater good.





Works Cited

 D. Vinod, H. (2017). Newborn Sex Selection and India’s Overpopulation Problem. 



Connor, S. (2017). Medical ethicist: Ban on sex selection of IVF embryos is not justified. [Online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/medical-ethicist-ban-on-sex-selection-of-ivf-embryos-is-not-justified-8683940.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].

Guttmacher Institute. (2017). Abortion Bans in Cases of Sex or Race Selection or Genetic Anomaly. [Online] Available at: https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-bans-cases-sex-or-race-selection-or-genetic-anomaly [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].



Phys.org. (2017). Population benefits of sexual selection explain the existence of males. [Online] Available at: https://phys.org/news/2015-05-population-benefits-sexual-males.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].