Thousands of couples take their children to build-a-bear workshops every year to build and design a perfect teddy bear but the fact that there are also “build-a-baby” workshops is preposterous! Thousands of couples from around the world are using new reproductive technology not to procreate or save a baby’s life but to build a “perfect baby” and in the proce3ss they end up killing many babies.
There have been more than 4000 cases of successful gender selected babies due to new technology and scientific discoveries.Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide has been commonly reported for centuries. Couples don’t just want a healthy baby, they want a perfect baby and perfection, of course, starts with gender. In many cultures around the world, such as the Chinese, Indian and African, having a male child is more desirable than having a female child and these are the cultures where sex-selective abortion and female infanticide is most common.
That’s nothing new but sex-selective procreation seems to be the new trend in the modern world.Such practices, of using science to manipulate nature to this extent, are unethical, they lead to terminating pregnancies and distort sex ratios among humans therefore they should be outlawed as they can have many negative consequences for our society New technology, such as in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, has made it possible to select and fertilize gender specific sperm. Scientists use a technology called MicroSort to select gender specific sperm. “MicroSort is based on the premise that girl-producing sperm, which carry X chromosomes, are bigger than the boy-producing sperm, which carry Y chromosomes.
The procedure involves coloring a sperm sample with fluorescent dye and then zapping it with a laser that illuminates the dye. The bigger X chromosomes absorb more dye and glow brighter than the Y ones” (1st website). By combing this technique with in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination scientists are allowing couples to procreate in a sex-selective manner. This is highly unethical because it alters the very first duty of being a parent: loving your kids for who they are. This raises the question that if your parents won’t accept you for whom you are then who will?When parents start to choose genetic and physical characteristics of their babies, this would promote intolerance towards others and create problems in the human race. “If designer babies were to become commonplace, individuality as we know it would most likely cease to exist” (3rd website).
One thing leads to another. If couples can “discard” embryos to create the perfect child then they can also terminate a pregnancy to prevent an un-perfect child from being born. Tyrell reports that there are about nine egg cells that are collected from the mother for these procedures.When the procedure is complete and these eggs are fertilized with sperm to become embryos, eight of them are discarded since only one perfect embryo is desired. “Discarding is a fancy word for killing.
Let’s get down to basic science here. We have 9 eggs, and implant one, which becomes a “desirable” baby boy; then we throw away the other 8… If you destroy the baby in any stage before it becomes a baby then you kill a baby” (2nd website). If the embryos are meant to be “discarded” at the end, they shouldn’t have been made in the first place!Couples that come into these fertility institutes to design a perfect baby are willing to spend thousands of dollars just to select the right gender of their child. According to life news, these procedures can cost up to $45,000 (2nd website). When they pay such a high price, the couples are determined to have the perfect baby.
No scientific procedure can be 100% accurate all the time. According to the baby center these procedures have a, “success rate of approximately 75 to 80 percent” (1st website).In the case that the selected embryo turns out to be undesirable, these couples are unwilling to go home with an undesired child therefore mothers end up terminating these pregnancies and trying the procedure all over again. It becomes a cycle and as a result more embryos get killed. Dr.
Jeffrey Steinberg, director of The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles and New York City has admitted that many of his clients that come into his clinic ask for a baby boy (2nd website). Gender selection of a baby allows people distort the sex ratios even more.Certain cultures have a preference for male children but because female infanticide is illegal, couples are flying over to American fertility institutes to produce male children. If these procedures continue to be offered to couples then more male children will be created and the world will face a shortage of females.
Sex selection and designing babies is outlawed in many nations but it is still legal in the United States. The United States should also outlaw such practices except for medical reasons because using them otherwise is an abuse of technology.
