Lift sex selection ban - expert

Thursday July 4th, 2013

Britain should lift its ban on couples being allowed to choose the sex of their children, an expert claimed yesterday.

Critics say that sex selection could lead to major gender imbalances as some cultures prefer to have children of one sex or the other.

But, according to Professor Stephen Wilkinson, these fears do not apply to the UK.

Professor Wilkinson, professor of bioethics at Lancaster University, said the ban was simply leading to couples going abroad to get treatment.

He said couples wanted to use sex selection for "very personal" reasons.

These included having a mix of boy and girl children - or ensuring the first child was of a particular sex.

There would be no impact on the gender balance of the population, he will tell a conference in London.

He said: "We examined the ethics of gender preference and sex selection techniques in the British context and found no reason to expect harm to future children or wider society if these techniques were made available for ‘social’ reasons within our regulated fertility treatment sector.

"‘People who would prefer their new baby to be of a particular sex often have their own very personal reasons for this, to do with their family’s particular circumstances or history. We didn’t find any ethical arguments sufficient to justify a blanket ban on these people seeking sex selection.

"As IVF and other techniques can now fulfil these often strongly-felt preferences, it’s important to ask why wishing for a girl or a boy baby might be so wrong that parents must be stopped from attempting to achieve it in the UK."

Tags: Childbirth and Pregnancy | UK News | Women's Health & Gynaecology

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