“Congratulations, you have a baby girl!” is what a doctor might exclaim after a woman has given birth to a daughter. Was this news a surprise to the woman? Did she know by ultrasound that she was expecting a daughter? Did she select the gender of her child to ensure she was having a daughter?
A gynaecologist can easily perform an ultrasound and tell parents what gender to expect their child to be. Reasonably, parents have the choice to learn the gender or to keep it a surprise. However, For parents to know they are expecting a daughter by chance or for them to choose that they want a daughter are two different cases. There are a variety of methods that allow parents to choose the gender of their child. In some cases, there may be fear of passing down a sex-linked genetic disease and so a certain gender may be preferred to protect the child’s health. However, a contentious issue is whether or not gender selection for non-medical reasons is ethically defensible. There are three positions that one could take: gender selection can never, sometimes, or always be ethically defended. In this paper, I intend to argue that gender selection is always permissible.
Fundamental rights cannot be restricted except for valid reasons. Reproductive choice is a fundamental right (Harris 293). I argue that there are no valid reasons for which this right can be limited. Therefore, reproductive choice cannot be restricted for any reason.
There are means to select the gender of one’s child and everyone should be allowed the option of using these means to select the gender of their child if that is what they want. People should always be allowed the choice. Gender selection should always permissible because restricting it would be limiting the ri...
... middle of paper ...
...rmful to females, allowing gender selection, even if it is sexist is a better alternative.
To restrict reproductive choice by prohibiting gender selection on the basis that it is sexist should not be seen as a relevant idea. Gender selection should always be allowed regardless of the reason for which it is occurring.
Works Cited
Dickens, B.M. “Can Sex Selection Be Ethically Tolerated?” Journal of Medical Ethics 28.6 (2002): 335-336. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
Harris, John. “Sex Selection and Regulated Hatred.” Journal of Medical Ethics 31.5 (2005): 291-294. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
Savulescu, Julian. “In Defense of Selection for Nondisease Genes.” The American Journal of Bioethics 1.1 (2001): 16-19. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
Wertz, Dorothy C. “Preconception Sex Selection: A Question of Consequences.” The American Journal of Bioethics 1.1 (2001): 36-37. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
In today’s day and age there are new forms of technology being developed to accomplish just about any task and make any sort of wish possible. With this being said many human beings throw caution to the wind and decide to take action on their every want and need. When it comes to the process of procreating and bringing a child into this world parents can find themselves hoping and wishing for one gender over another. In order to ensure that the gender they want is what they get parents can go through variations of processes in order to select the desired gender for their baby. Many in today’s world have deemed these sorts of practices unethical and immoral and some forms of religion refuse the idea of it. “The prospect of preconception gender selection appears to pose the conflict—long present in other bioethical issues—between individual desires and the larger common good. Yet doing so leads to the risk that children will be treated as vehicles of parental satisfaction rather than as ends in themselves, and could accelerate the trend toward negative and even positive selection of offspring characteristics” (Robertson 3). In this argumentative essay I will be going through the different areas of controversy surrounding this particular topic and focusing on the immorality of such an act.
fact that a person is a woman is still shown to be a disadvantage when
...ke all men, women have the right to chose form themselves, furthermore Trap laws and the Supreme court ruling of the Planned parenthood V. Casey is unconstitutional because they are controlling the choice of women have an abortion. Women with unwanted pregnancies may not able to support or care for the child and may suffer growing up. The Roe v. Wade Supreme court ruling that women should have abortion access with out restriction as long it is with in the first three months of the pregnancy.
Only one person should be able to dictate whether a woman will or will not have a child, and that person is the woman herself. A woman should be the only one to decide what happens to her body. Abortion is an extremely personal decision between a woman, her family, and her doctor; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. The Republican Party rejected Roe v. Wade ruling and wants to outlaw abortions. They do not make any exceptions for the life or health of woman which is why their "partial birth abortion" bans have repeatedly been ruled unconstitutional by the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. Choice is a fundamental, constitutional right. It is a woman’s right to decide whether or not she wants to abort a baby, therefore it should be legal. It is too invasive for the government to attempt to dictate this. The ability for a woman to have control over her own body is necessary to civil rights. If you take away her reproductive choice then the government is basically forcing a woman to continue on with a pregnancy. How much is too much? How intrusive are we going to let our government become? Certain issues of morality are a personal decision, like abortion, which means they need to be decided and implemented by the individual.
If you were having a baby today, your doctor would ask if you wanted to know the gender of your baby. But what if they ask, instead of if you want to know, but if you want to choose your baby’s gender? What if they ask if you want to choose its height, physical and mental ability, or even its life span? Would you alter what will be forged by ‘god’s hand’? This choice presents more than meets the eye. Having the choice doesn't just mean your child could have an advantage (or disadvantage) in life. It doesn't mean that humanity is becoming more ‘perfect’. Actually, it means the opposite. This choice can shape our world into a prejudicial mess. In the ‘not-too-distant future’, this choice is presented by the movie Gattaca, and many social issues arise, deteriorating society as a whole.
Stating the obvious, no one can choose the gender they are born with. It is possible to change genders through extensive surgery once you are older, but you cannot choose how you are born. Maybe one day there will be the technology and science that provides that possibility, but today it does not exist. It is no new topic, but government mandated health care is something to be addressed. Though people’s opinions go back and forth and there is no leading side, many people have heard of the topic of government mandated birth control. The main argument in support of this is the question of why women should have to pay for something out of their control, while men do not.
According to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the topic of gender selection, as an efficient way to choose the sex of babies anterior to the conception, is an ethically dangerous
One in every 2,000 babies born every year are neither male nor female, they are what is known as hermaphrodites. These children and their families are forced into a life of hardship and encounter many conflicts, which need to be addressed. Should the parents choose the assignment of the sex to a newborn child and subject them to a life of surgery and doctor visits? There are 100 to 200 pediatric surgical reassignments every year. Many of these children are subjected to doctor visits for the rest of their childhood. Worst of all, many of these children find themselves resembling or identifying with the gender opposite of that which their parents chose for them.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was created to screen for disease, although more recently it is being used in choosing the sex of one’s child. PGD should be legal as long as the welfare of the participants remain a priority in regards to safety. I am not against the use of PGD to avoid health risks. A child should not be born to into this world without the opportunity to live a happy health life, free of ridicule, medications, pain and suffering.
Our Nation was built on the ideas of freedom and independence. With that concept, I believe that our government needs to trust that women have the capability to choose what is best for their future. Our society should respect women’s independence and grant them the freedom to decide what is right. This issue is important to me because history has shown that restricting abortions, not only undermines women, but can also be very dangerous.
Determining whether to divulge the gender of a child should be a personal choice. Society should not dictate whether one chooses to disclose the sex of their child. At conception, the gender is determined by chromosome characteristics and it will be the male (male semen) that dictates whether the baby will be a boy or girl. Nowhere in any literature that has been read or published that it states that “society” is the determining factor whether a girl or boy will be conceived. Society suggests that knowing the gender is routine, but what may be considered routine for some is not necessarily customary for all. If one chooses to stray away from what is considered to be “normal” it poses or present an issue. Individuals are instantaneously met with opposition or back lash due to nondisclosure of the sex of their child whether it is unborn or born. A typical argument would be as to what color clothing to bring for the unborn or born child, should one bring pink or blu...
For centuries there had been one sex that dominated the development of society. Laws, religion and lifestyle all revolved around the idea that one sex, the male sex, was dominant. Oppressed and considered inferior, women would obey the men, forgo all rights and accept all responsibility. Only recently, with the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, have both sexes been considered equal. For the first time in human history, both sexes have been given the chance to fulfill their potentials without discrimination. Parents, despite preferences of having a girl, or a boy, have known that regardless, their child would have an equal opportunity at life. The cutting edge technology, however, means that all this could change. The ability of parents to actually select the gender of their child could have not only devastating effects on society, but on the lives of so many children and parents. Whether parents had a girl or a boy has always been left up to nature to decide. To date, no-one has dared interfere with the genetic workings of the body, mainly because the technology did not exist to do it. Now, with the dawn of the twenty-first century, that technology has arrived and mankind is faced with a very important decision: whether or not to “play God” and manipulate the gender of their child to suit their preferences. The romance of having the perfect nuclear family, with two boys and two girls’ fills the heads of young couples everywhere, and when given the opportunity, m...
Gender reveal parties have been all the rage in American culture in recent years. These parties usually consist of a cisgender heterosexual couple inviting friends and family over to celebrate the announcement of the sex of their baby that is on the way. If this kind overly dramatic and narcissistic celebration for a person who has not even seen the outside of a womb does not make you cringe as much as it makes me, there are questions that still remain. Are we assigned our gender at birth, or do we perform one based on the values that we have learned? In this essay, I argue that gender is performative and is influenced and enforced by cultural norms. I am able to do this by analyzing a series of academic articles pertaining to the topic and
Practicing sex selection prior to conception is viewed as a more natural and more of a safe way to conceive a child of a desired gender. “The trouble is that society as a whole is not capable of handling Sex Selection without terrible results” (Dixon). The most practiced pre-selection is the laboratory. Here urine specimens are used to monitor ovarian steroid changes during ovulation. “Although methods of selecting sex before conception are not entirely reliable […]” (British Medical Journal), it is obviously the practical route to go. A response to either practice of sex selection merely depends on the factor of cost and ease of access.
Part Two of Kartina Karkazis’ novel Fixing Sex focuses on the reality parents face when their child receives an intersex diagnosis. Karkazis illustrates what a couple experiences when they discovered their baby girl was not in fact a girl, in accordance to the socially constructed understanding of a female. She also covers the importance of choosing a sex with an intersexual baby when society is involved. A great example from the text is, “Bodies with atypical or conflicting biological markers of gender are troublesome because they disturb the social body; they also disrupt the process if determining an infant’s place in the world” (96). It ties in perfectly to the purpose of paragraphs four, five and six: The Ramifications of Corrective Surgery (Good and Bad). The quote highlights one of the “bad” ramifications of intersexual corrective surgery. It has progressed to the point where society has such a large impact on what is classified as a “proper girl” or “proper boy” that if a baby does not classify into one of those categories, then the child is no longer accepted.