The Ethics of Procreation are Getting Really Complicated

I recently read about two new-to-me innovations related to reproduction. First, Slate has a piece discussing the emergence of at-home prenatal test kits that enable you to determine the gender of a fetus as early as five weeks: Kaplan’s reporting shows how the abortion option looms behind these tests. The Jains considered abortion but decided against it. Another woman “wanted a girl so badly that she and her husband spent $25,000 on in-vitro fertilization so that doctors could select female embryos to implant in her womb.” The woman took a test at 10 weeks to make sure she wasn’t carrying a male fetus. A third woman who got a bogus result from her test says “there are women out there who experience really big disappointment. They really want to give their husbands the little boy they want, or a little girl, and they will abort based on these results.” One example of these tests is Baby Gender Mentor (kind of a misuse of ‘mentor’ ther...