Gender Selection

Having a baby is really going high tech now. You, for a price (I wonder if insurance covers this), can <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTech/Living/gender_selection_040426-1.html">chose the sex of your baby</a> prior to fertilization of the egg with reasonable expectations of success. I don't know what to think of this. It kind of reduces the element of surprise. With my kids the funny thing was we only could decide on names that turned out to be the appropriate gender. When we had a girl the only names we could decide on was a girl name and the boys name was up in the air. When we had the boy it was the other way around. I guess we just knew subconsciously which it was going to be. I don't think I could choose at all if I could predetermine which gender it was going to be. I love all my kids the way they are.<br />n<!–more–><br />nPeople complain that in societies like China and India where a boy is more valuable than a girl that ultrasound is used to see the sex of a child and unwanted female babies are aborted. Might this kind of technology be better in a way since the selection is done prior to fertilization and abortion of a viable fetus would be less likely? The quandaries of our medicine allows are getting tougher all the time.<br />n<br />n<b>Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other. Edgar Watson Howe</b>