Sex Selection

Social sex selection — choosing gametes or embryos on the basis of their sex — is a controversial issue, which to many marks an important boundary in the regulation of genetics. Sex selection for medical reasons has been practised in the United Kingdom for the past 15 years, although pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in general remains tightly regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), and is very rare.

However, most liberal Anglo-American professional bioethicists favour the principle of reproductive autonomy. It is argued that there is no good reason why parents should not be permitted to choose the sex of their children. If sex selection is only permitted for 'family balancing' — to allow parents with daughters to choose a son, or vice versa — there should be little fear of sexism, for example. Furthermore, politicians seem to be swayed by the bioethicists' view: in their recent report on regulating genetics, the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology concluded that: “On balance we find no adequate justification for prohibiting the use of sex selection for family balancing”1.

However, at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Centre at the University of Newcastle, we have been asking members of the public about their attitudes to social sex selection, and how they justify their positions (S. Banks, J.L. Scully and T.W.S., unpublished observations). Not only were more than 80% of respondents opposed to liberalization, but they could give coherent reasons. Although they drew on arguments that are familiar from the professional bioethics literature, the general public particularly emphasized “being a good parent” and the assertion that children are “a gift, not a commodity”. Respondents balanced the rights of parents with the rights of potential children: “The child isn't the parent's property, they are their own person, and putting expectations on them doesn't seem to respect them or treat them as autonomous.” Although the status of the embryo was not of pressing concern to our respondents (who largely did not object to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to avoid the birth of children with genetic disease), there was a marked ambivalence about the desirability of parental choice, and the idea of family balancing was given little credence. “I don't think balancing equal numbers of both kinds is necessarily a good thing, and why should it be?” It seems as if the public conclude that sex selection is wrong, even if no one can be shown to be directly harmed as a consequence, because something valuable would be lost in the parent–child relationship.

Public consultation is an important part of the HFEA's process: their recent consultation also found that the public is overwhelmingly opposed to the liberalization of sex selection, and on this basis the HFEA recommended that the prohibition should continue. But the philosopher John Harris (University of Manchester, UK) argued that for the HFEA to bow to public opinion, in the absence of good arguments, was to apply the “tyranny of the majority”2. However, our data show that the general public are not just providing 'knee-jerk reactions' but have sound reasons for their opposition. This indicates both that politicians might be premature in accepting the 'thin' judgements of liberal bioethicists over the 'thick' assessments of the wider public, and that more complex forms of deliberation should have a role in future regulation of genetic developments.