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Making Sex-Selection Easier?


I have to admit, I've not been in this market segment for a long while now, so you'll have to forgive my exclamation over this relatively new at home self-testing kit for pregnant mothers. IntelliGender is selling a kit that is gendertestsupposed to let parents know the sex of the baby weeks before a sonogram would.

While this test is getting bad reviews -- if it's even possible, the developers have a very long way to go to make their product trustworthy -- the first thing that sprang to my mind was that it might be used for the nefarious purposes of sex-selection. The Gender Prediction Test might be a way for parents to practice sex-selection and abort their baby without the trauma of having to see the baby during an sonogram. 

Many countries around the world are suffering from skewed sex-selection practices, and are starting to write laws which makes the practice illegal.  

Meanwhile, I wonder if one or two of the 250,000 people who've bought this product has had an abortion due to the test result. 

I hope our country will never suffer from the skewed ratio of boys to girls like some countries do.  

Comments:

Thankfully, Carol, she wasn't alone in her efforts. M.- Teresa's ministry had and continues today with many other faithful people.

We should pray for the souls of people like Ms. Bono. No matter how many pills or surgery she and others like her have, underneath it all, they continue to be the same person, body, mind and soul.
LeeQuod, if you watched that NCIS episode to the end, you should remember that Gibbs solved the problem of where to incarcerate him/her by putting a bullet right between his/her eyes.

Kim, if you'll remember, Chaz Bono's parents were California Hippies. What else would you expect from her/him? My biggest problem with her/him is that God won't recognize her/him when she/he dies! (That's the punch line from an old joke.)
And, lastly, I agree with your Mother Teresa comment EXCEPT what would she do with 50 MILLION of them???
Among some of the scientists whom I have encountered, the attitude towards some kinds of experiments is not "Ought we or ought we not do this?" but rather "Can we get this slick trick to work?"

This sentence from a recent announcement describes a nation-wide initiative: "Living Foundries is a suite of programs sponsored by DARPA with the goal of transforming biology into an engineering practice."

Seems to be just the tiniest element of hubris, don't you think? The Synthetic Biology researchers in general seem to think that their self-policing will prevent anyone from doing anything inappropriate or unsafe.

In connection with this, it always strikes me as odd that evolutionists-- for whom the notion of 'mutation' is at the core of their understanding-- would be so brazen and blase about engineering and creating new organisms. Might they not mutate?
I wish we had a Mother Teresa in Washington who'd say to people in our own great nation, in China, and other places around the world, give me your children.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/mtspeech.html
What's distressing is that this kind of 'consumerist' thinking is also evident among some Xns, who seem to think that their desire to have the baby they wish supersedes all other considerations.
Some seem to have no problem at all with using IVF, disregarding both the enormous expense and the 'minor problem' of a bunch of embryos remaining.

Regarding sex-selection of children, Mark Steyn has the great though cruel line, "China will soon be the first gay superpower since Sparta!" The practices there can be utterly brutal when it comes to the birth of a daughter.
Don't feel bad, Kim; I'm not sure Chaz Bono knows who Chaz Bono is. :-/

I remember Gina razzing Allen Thornburgh about "Dancing With The Stars" and Wayne Newton. If that interoffice rivalry were still in place, I'm sure you'd have heard about Mr. (?) Bono before now.

In my darker moments I wonder if it will someday be a choice between aborting a baby of "the wrong" sex, or simply changing their sex in utero. I.e., deciding which surgery is cheaper and less risky for the mother.

I seem to recall an NCIS episode (Hey, I was lonely, stuck in my hotel room all day working, and there was an NCIS marathon on a cable channel) where it turned out the attractive female suspect was actually male. They found this out by DNA testing. It's an interesting thought - do you incarcerate someone in men's or women's prison based on their chromosomes, or their current physical characteristics?

Didn't Aldous Huxley warn us about all this?
Until today, I couldn't figure out who Chaz Bono was. Despite money and fame, she must have been starving for mother/father love. How sad.
Sex-selection, as in "We want a boy, not a girl?" Hmmm, I'll bet I could fund my retirement right now if I ran out and bought stock in companies that produce violent videogames.

But I think I'd prefer to die penniless.


Cue the avalanche of "Girls play those games, too, LeeQuod!!" responses, in 3, 2, 1,... Because I know, a small percentage of those games are sold to and played by females. I could have said "companies that deliver mail-order brides" but I'm probably straying too far from Kim's original topic with just the videogames bit. But hmmm - sharia law does permit a pious Muslim to sell his daughter to another man as her wife, even when she's a preteen. So since Muslims are reproducing faster than everyone else on the planet, maybe the numbers all work out. I stand corrected.

But Kim's point about using gender-discovery tools to permit sex-selective abortions still stands.

I wonder if anyone has discussed this topic with Chaz Bono.