AUSTRALIAN ethics experts are currently debating whether partents should have the right to pick their child's sex.

AUSTRALIAN ethics experts are currently debating whether partents should have the right to pick their child's sex.

WHEN Diane Tully "found out she was pregnant with her fourth boy, she cried.
"I love my boys and I would never give any of them back. But I feel like I am being cheated out of the girl I have dreamed of for as long as I can remember,” she says.
Tully’s story is common. But does she have the right to choose?
That’s the question the Australian Health Ethics Committee is currently considering.
It banned sex selection for non-medical purposes through the IVF procedure pre-genetic diagnosis (PGD) in 2005 and the moratorium expires this year.
IVF specialists are lobbying for the ban to be lifted, arguing that it does no harm and, as long as it doesn’t cost taxpayers, couples should have the right to choose. And many parents who have at least two boys or two girls, and who long for a child of the opposite sex to “balance” their family, agree.

“Our Federal Government needs to look at families with three or more children of one sex and have some empathy for them… not just accuse them of ethical wrong for wanting a child of the other sex,” Tully writes in a forum.
A Melbourne mother of three boys who said in July she would go to Thailand to have a daughter was lambasted in the media.
Opponents say, if you allow couples to choose the sex of their child, what next? But why shouldn’t parents who have three girls or three boys enjoy reproductive autonomy? 
PUBLIC DEBATE
Associate Professor Justin Oakley, director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, says it’s time for a public debate. 
But he predicts policy makers will place the issue in the too-hard basket as there are relatively few people who want to choose the sex of their children.
He says there is nothing wrong with parents hoping for a baby of one particular gender, but when that turns into a decision to discard an embryo of the unwanted sex, questions are raised about the embryo’s moral status.
Options are currently limited for couples wanting to sex select. They can travel overseas for PGD, try the Shettles method (see box, right) or simply take their chances.
RIGHT TO CHOOSE?
Professor Gab Kovacs, international medical director of Monash IVF, says he has yet to see a valid argument for making the procedure illegal. 
“If a couple is so determined to have a boy or a girl that they’re prepared to go through IVF, and then they’re not allowed to do it and they have a child of the sex they don’t want, that child may not have the same amount of nurture as the preferred-gender child might have had. It’s in the child’s best interests to allow these couples to gender select.”
The Australian Health Ethics Committee “believes that admission to life should not be conditional upon a child being a particular sex”. 
But it permits the procedure in cases where parents suffer serious genetic diseases that can be passed to children of one gender.
The National Health and Medical Research Council says opposition to gender selection includes the fact that the parent-child relationship should be unconditional; that it contributes to discrimination against women; and that it harms men in some cultures by creating a shortage of women for them to marry.
On the other side of the argument, gender selection allows “family balancing”, enables parents to fulfil religious obligations or cultural expectations and is thought of as a matter of individual autonomy.
DIETS AND LUNAR CYCLES
In their efforts to conceive a particular gender, some try naturopathy and follow “boy” or “girl” diets, chart their lunar cycles, change sexual positions and try douches.
Dr Gino Pecoraro, secretary of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, says there is no science to support gender-selection diets but there is evidence that because male sperm weigh less, they swim faster, so you’re more likely to have a boy if you have sex closer to ovulation. 
Sydney naturopath Claudette Wadsworth says that for ethical reasons, she will only help couples with sex selection if they have two or more children.
The boy diet is salt-based and high in sodium and potassium, while the girl diet is meat- and dairy-based and is higher in calcium and magnesium. 
“Because the diet is restrictive, you don’t want to be on it for too long, and we put cautions on it,” Wadsworth says.
The diet is said to influence pH levels in the woman’s reproductive tract to help male or female sperm depending on the acidity or alkalinity. Women will also take supplements and chart their lunar cycles.
Sex selection with a naturopath costs hundreds of dollars, compared to $12,000 to $15,000 for an IVF cycle. 
“All these things – diet, abstinence, coital position, acid douches – none of them make any difference. They’re all just a con,” says Professor Kovacs. 
“Fifty per cent of the time it’s worth it because 50 per cent of the time it works.”
Labor’s Health Minister Nicola Roxon said earlier this year the government was not reviewing the ban on gender selection because it wants to make changes. 
“And at a personal level, I am very uncomfortable about the suggestions that such a change might be made,” Roxon said.
So couples who want to gender select and can’t afford an overseas trip might just have to rely on luck.
Source:news.com.au