Gender Testing = Gender Selection

Yesterday a test was made available to the Australian public that can tell the gender of a unborn child, as young as eight weeks old. This has occured despite gender selection being banned in Australia in 2005.

Reactions have been mixed, with some doctors and pro-life campaigners believing that the move only encourages the age-old problem of gender selection.

In India and China, gender-related abortion is illegal and, therefore, it is illegal to determind the child's gender, prior to its birth. If countries who have been around for much longer than we have and who have much larger populations than we have feel the need to put these restrictions in place, who are we to think we will be immune?

We may not have strict traditions requiring male heirs or a society with strong influences on females but there are still countless examples of Australian families desperate to 'even out their family', who try and try again until they are finally gifted with the desired child. This is entirely understandable and we'd be crazy to assume that most parents go into parent-hood gender-preference free.

For most, IntelliGender will be no more than a fun way to extend their planning time, prior to the birth of their child. What we must consider are the extreme cases. Parents who, due to extenuating circumstances, find it difficult to think rationally. The news of 'another girl', or 'one more son' may be too much for these people to handle and, when finding out as early as eight weeks into the pregnancy, is far too easy to 'fix'.

Even though we often don't agree with the politics and decisions of countries like India and China , maybe we shouldn't throw the babies out with the bath water. If they've struggled with this problem for all these hundred's of years, maybe they might just know what they're doing when they ban gender-testing.