Posted on 07/11/2010 9:47:51 AM PDT by wagglebee
One of the big stories today in Australia is of a Melbourne woman who has announced that she is traveling to Thailand to have sex selection IVF because it is against the law here. She just has to have a girl, don’t you know! From the story:
A MELBOURNE mum is so desperate to have a daughter she is travelling to Thailand so she can choose the sex of her next baby, frustrated at Australian medical authorities as they drag their feet over the issue. Already blessed with three boys – aged 5, 4 and 1 – the 36-year-old and her husband say they have been forced to sidestep Australian laws because they cannot wait for federal medical authorities to decide if they will overturn their ban on the practice. While she says her boys mean the world to her, the mother – who does not want to be identified for fear of reprisals against her family – will spend more than $15,000 to ensure she conceives a girl in a Bangkok clinic in the coming months.
Of course, this means the male embryonic brothers of those treasured boys will be tossed out with the other medical waste. So, in this case, a Y chromosome is a deadly defect. But after all, it is all about entlitlement:
“We have all this technology available now and we don’t need to use it open-slather, but I think we do need to use it with parameters, with doctors involved, to enhance our lives.”
Proper parameters? She’s circumventing legal parameters by leaving Australia for Thailand because she wants what she wants.
Increasingly, IVF is not about treating infertility, but about reducing reproduction to a crass consumer activity akin to choosing a breed of dog or model of flat screen television. This is objectification pure and simple. When we believe we are entitled not just to a child but to the kind of child we want, it strikes a body blow against unconditional love–becuase by definition, it isn’t. Of course, the point of telling the media about the “mum’s” plans was to promote that very outcome.
I have not once in this thread or any place else ever supported IVF as a method of determining the sex of a child.
I am always ready to discuss the merits of my postion(s) on a given topic but I will only my actual postition not the ones you make up.
Please explain how I misuderstood your position.
Maybe not, but IT LOOKS like you are making an argument for them.
You said sex selection is a freedom people should have. So what were you referring to if not IVF used for sex selection, since that is the topic of the artilce? Are you then referring to leaving the infant of the wrong sex on a hill outside the city? Or what other method of sex selection are you supporting?
I have never supported IVF as a way of determining sex of a child in this discussion. Not once. I asked quite specifically that outside of IVF if determining the sex of a child was somehow immoral. There have been some very intelligent and thought provoking responses to my actual postion...such that I feel it only fair to those posters that I rethink my postion on this matter. You are not one of the posters I’m referring to btw.
Thanks for the clarification. Just to make sure I understand, you think sex selection is a freedom people should have, but not via IVF?
And then where does the Luddite charge come in?
Oops - should have added this question:
What method or methods of sex selection do you think people should have the freedom to use, if IVF is not one of them?
Ah, durus is part of the evo crowd as well, the only ones I've EVER seen throwing the accusation of "Luddite" around.
The evo crowd tends to be liberal to the core.
So, yes, durus, as to your other question, I guess I am calling you part of the pro-death crowd. If you are going to present the arguments and reasoning that they use, you are going to come across as part of the pro-death crowd.
We do not have the technology today to select the sex of a child without the destruction of human life. As it stands today, multiple embryos must be created in order to determine the sex. Until technology can determine which sperm are X and which are Y and cull the desired ones out, that's the way it has to be.
Right now, it's the ONLY method for sex selection. The baby has to be created before it can be tested to determine gender.
If you support sex selection, you by default support IVF.
Accusing someone of being a Luddite puts you outside that category yourself.
Waiting to find out what kind of sex selection you think people should have the freedom to use that isn’t IVF.
MM, I figured IVF was the only way.
Durus, what other ways you prefer?
Dont the Indians and other Far East countries have some ancient methods that at least influence it a little without interfering with the conception/birth process?
I have read of some methods; don’t know if any work nowadays or not, but people could certainly try and it would do no harm. Would be interesting to canvass couples trying to conceive and if some wanted to try the methods, and see what happened.
A few I can remember without checking are:
1. Wife eats little to no salt for some time before conception and IIRC husband eats more salt.
2. Husband eats specific foods like almonds, can’t remember what else, maybe milk.
3. Wife fasts the day before conception.
4. Odd and even days mean something - counting the first day of the period as Day 1, specific numbered days are supposed to bring a girl or boy.
5. Which nostril is the active dominant nostril in husband and wife at the time of conception. L nostril brings girl, R nostril brings boy. There is a science of breathing, of which dominant nostril is a part. Everyone breathes through one nostril more than another, which change throughout the day. Unless stopped up with illness or deviated septum. R nostril means more solar energy is functioning in the channels, L nostril means more lunar energy is active, and this influences many things.
6. I think phases of the moon might play a part.
But in this age many of these natural measures are either difficult to do, or have lost some potency. Best is to pray to God for a healthy child who is inclined to His service, whether boy or girl!
I am of 2 minds on this.. I see it as self centered and part of the ME generation .. on the other.. it is far superior to sex selective abortions that go on all the time..
I also believe that God is sovereign in all matters and if He desires them to have a girl that is what they will have with or without the IVF
If He wants the to have another son that is what they will have with or without IVF
If He ordains this to fail (as many do) then it will not work
Scripture tells us that God opens and closes the womb ..so even in his seemly man made technology God is still in charge.
In all fairness, the culture of death's default method of gender selection is to do an ultrasound and slaughter the unwanted ones.
There is ZERO DIFFERENCE between discarding embryos of the unwanted genders during IVF and aborting the fetuses of unwanted genders after an ultrasound. They are two different medical procedures to produce the same morally indefensible result.
There are dietary regimens, as well as ideas on the timing of intercourse in relation to ovulation, that purport to affect the sex of the child. Terri Irwin (widow of Steve Irwin, “the Crocodile Hunter”) discussed, in her book, what she ate and how they, er, you know ... in the effort to conceive a son for their second child. They did, in fact, have a son ... but then the odds of a boy are slightly more than even in any conception!
I was just going to respond, following my previous post. Killing an unborn child at the pre-implantation embryo stage is no different from killing him by chemical or surgical abortion ... or by abandoning him or her on a hillside after delivery.
It is Satan’s deception to persuade very many people that the tiniest human beings are less human than ... I.
That's the funniest post I've read in a long time!
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