Gender Equilibrium

In Lisa Eliot’s Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps-and What We Can Do about It, Dr. Eliot underscores the new practice among parents and parents to be when choosing to have children. This practice is known as sex selection. Sex Selection entails a myriad of techniques which allow parents to have greater jurisdiction on what the gender or sex of their children will be. Eliot discusses the notion of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), a procedure “used to identify male embryos for mothers known to be carriers of sex-linked recessive genetic disorders, such as hemophilia, Duchenne’s muscle dystrophy. While this allows parents to be to possibly evit having a child with a certain disorder, of late many parents have been consulting with fertility experts and using PGD for family balancing, in other words allowing parents to choose to have lets say a daughter if they have a son or vice versa. Another technique for sex selection, better known as Microsort allows a scientist to sort through sperm because sperm cells for males and females are of a certain different size. Eliot underscores that this biasing of what the sex of one’s child will turn out to be has ethical issues. The ratio of boys to girls has become skewed in Asian countries due to abortion of unwanted female fetuses. Canada has banned sex selection. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has advised that initiating sex selection “solely to create gender variety in a family should at this time be discouraged.” Eliot herself seems to express disagreements about this idea of sex selection. She mentions “As a mother of both a daughter and sons, I believe we’ve got to find a better balance. Both sexes have their strengths and vulnerabilities, their easy and troublesome periods while growing up. The reason for studying sex is not to tally up who’s winning or losing but to learn how to compensate for them early on.” She advocates helping girls and boys overcome their deficiencies and not to just select for one gender over another. One may agree with Eliot upon learning of the grievances and miseries that sex selection has caused globally. Anjani Trivedi and Heather Timmons’ article has underscored the fact that sex selection in India has led to acts of violence in India. Because baby boys are favored in India over girls, there are a lot of men, but not as much women to marry them. This is led to higher crime rates and rape committed by young unmarried men. The article noted that there is a certain group of men aged 15-35 in such countries as India who is responsible for committing most of the crimes. This group of men is usually unmarried. The articles notes that thanks to population growth and “a still-prevalent practice of female foeticide, the number of ‘extra men’ is growing among India’s youth”. This has become so devastating that the Indian government has tried to implement cash incentive programs which cause families to look upon girls as an asset rather than a liability” While most probably abortion is practiced in India in order to eliminate a fetus with a gender undesirable to the parents, the consequences of more humane sex selection can have similar ramifications in our country as abortion does to India. It is important to understand the opinions of people such as Eliot regarding such a practice Trivedi, Anjani and Timmons, Heather “India’s Man Problem” New York Times 16 January 2013. online article