Yet Another Reason Why I Should Only Subscribe to "People" Magazine

Time for a vent:

This week's Newsweek featured a cover story on couples who select the gender of their children through various methods, the most effective being PGD. PGD, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis, involves creating embryos through IVF and then testing them for chromosomal abnormalities prior to implantation, to avoid passing on severe genetic defects that could result in miscarriage or a fatally ill child.

Now, people are starting to use this procedure solely to test for gender, so they can implant only "girl" or "boy" embryos. And it pisses me off.

This is where I should add a disclaimer about how I normally respect the choices of others, how we should all follow our own path to parenthood, etc. etc. But I don't feel like being generous today. Because I, and countless women like me, have spent months and years of our lives going through the hell of infertility and miscarriage, subjecting ourselves to countless invasive and painfull procedures, all in the hopes that some day we might be able to give birth to a healthy child. ANY healthy child - I'd gladly take boy, girl or hermaphrodite at this point.

Yet, due to the colossal unfairness of the universe, there are people out there for whom the miracle of a healthy child isn't enough. They have to go a step further by designing a baby who balances the gender split in their family. And maybe that's their right. But I can't get over two things: 1) how desperately grateful millions of infertile women would be to have the girls or boys that these people shun, and 2) that during their IVF/PGD procedure, these people simple discard healthy embryos of the "wrong" sex.

When doctors perform PGD for recurrent miscarriage, they eliminate only the embryos that carry a severe chromosomal deformity. The rest of the embryos, regardless of sex, are either implanted or frozen for future use. But to simply toss them aside because of gender - well, to me it just seems too much like the abortion, abandonment, or murder of baby girls around the world in cultures that value males more highly. I'm pro-choice and all, but I find gender-based abortion scary and in my opinion, the new PGD-for-gender-selection trend falls dangerously close to this category.

Of course, lots of my outrage just boils down to the fact that I'm jealous, because caring about the sex of my child is a luxury I can't ever imagine having.