This article is mainly about a study shows that simple blood test can help parents to predict their children’s gender as early as six weeks. Dr. Louise Wilkins-Haug, she suggests that people should be careful to sure that procedures and advocate accuracy claims with statistics. However, women may spend a lot of money for the tests. Dr. Bianchi emphasises the importance of educating health care providers that pregnant women are buying these tests.
In my opinion, gender-selection technology is an excellent resourse for parents who do not want to pass certain genetic disorders to children but I do not think that it should be used in order to provide boys to parents who for some reasond believe that male children are better than female children, because it would create an imbalance, expecailly in certain cultures such as China and India. First of all, gender-selection damage society by imbalances in gender. China and India are the most typical example in this case.In 2005, there were 118 boys born per 100 girls, and the numberof boys in this statistic is increasing. As gender selection technology become more and more widespread, the number of men will contibue to go up. At the same time, the number of women compares with the number of men are decreasing. As a result, more and more men cannot find wifes and therefore it will probably cause crime such as rape and violent. Moreover, gender-selection is immoral because it is discrimination. In China and India, male can get more opportunities to study and work; in contrast, numerous women in China and India, they do not have a lot of chances to get higher education. Some parents believe that woman find a rich husband is better than get higher education.Obviously, it is totally a wrong perception. Everyone is equal, people should not determine children to get education by their gender, it is unfair. Women and men should be given the same position whatever in society and family.
__________References
Test Can Tell Fetal Sex at 7 Weeks, Study Says(2011, Aug, 9). The New York Times Retrieved August, 16,2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/health/10birth.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=sex%20selection&st=cse
Test Can Tell Fetal Sex at 7 Weeks, Study Says(2011, Aug, 9). The New York Times Retrieved August, 16,2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/health/10birth.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=sex%20selection&st=cse
Hi Gloria! How are you?? ;))
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it can cause an imbalance between male and female gender. But normally the tend of birth of girls prioritizes the tend of birth of boys because of chromosome, right? So I think it's going to be alright if there was more boys born in this world, especially in Thailand. Comparing with the number of girl schools and the numbers of boy schools in Thailand, the number of girls school is much more than boy school. So it would be ok, if this method could be controlled which not lead to serious imbalance of gender.
Gender selection is discrimination? Yes, I think. But sometime it is not morally wrong. Like Gloria said, it helps avoid some genetic disorders or deceases.
ReplyDeletePeople usually think that males have more straight and healthier, actually, they are genetically weaker than female and have more risk of genetic and organic development problem during pregnancy.
How about abortion in China and India? I just know that people have legally rights to do it, but how its condition is.
And if only one zygote is chosen in gender selection while another discarded, is that abortion?
Tang,I am pretty good. And u?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it is better if there was more boys were born in Thailand,but I do not think there should be more boys born in the world.According to Wikipedia, it said that The sex ratio for the entire world population is 101 males to 100 females(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio)(line 6).
Like you said,"it would be ok, if this method could be controlled which not lead to serious imbalance of gender".
How should people control this method?
Dig picked up on exactly the comment I would have made.
ReplyDeleteGloria writes that "Moreover, gender-selection is immoral because it is discrimination" (¶ 4), and like Dig, I agree that it is definitely discrimination, but I'm also not so sure that simply being discrimination is enough to make something immoral.
Is "immoral" part of the definition of discrimination? I don't think so, and we discriminate all the time without thinking that it is immoral: universities discriminate when they decide to give places to some applicants and not others; I discriminate when I decide who to invite, and not to invite, into my home; and we discriminate when we choose good food over McDonalds, but I don't think that there is anything immoral in choosing not to eat McDonalds and other garbage food, in choosing who gets an invitation to see my library, nor necessarily in allocating limited university places to a surplus of eager applicants.
Of course, this brief analysis of the definition of discrimination has not proved that it is not sometimes discrimination, and I didn't mention the specific case that Gloria has brought to our attention.
Dig has given a response.
What do others think? Is discriminating in favour of one sex when deciding whether to abort or not moral or immoral? Why?
(This discussion also constitutes a timely lead in to our next class reading, so please feel welcome to respond with your ideas.)