New Zealand could soon be following suit with the United States by allowing parents to choose the sex of their unborn child. This comes after a report by the Bioethics Council, a ministerial advisory committee, recommended to government that there was nothing wrong with the practise being used in New Zealand.
Since the report was made public earlier this week, it has sparked a fierce backlash from some parts of the community, particularly religious leaders. This is also bound to divide many in the Maori and Pacific community with their religious and cultural beliefs.
The Bioethics Council supported the choice for parents to choose the sex of their babies through a testing procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
The Council informed Government that there was “insufficient cultural, ethical and spiritual reasons” to prohibit the use of PGD for sex selection for social reasons such as "family balancing" - providing PGD is undertaken at the parents' own cost.’
The costs are likely to around NZ$10,000 and a further NZ$2000 for testing for male and female.
The Catholic Church have disapproved and director of Catholic Bioethics Centre, Rev Dr Micheal McCabe has said “Sex selection crosses a boundary and opens up the possibility for using this technology for other social reasons, [to produce] so-called desirable characteristics."
However, this controversial method is apparently only to be carried out for medical conditions like detecting disabled characteristics of an embryo. Despite Public concern on this report, Professor Evans from Otago Univeristy’s Bioethics Council explains his support saying: "There have been huge battles fought in New Zealand for gender equality - that is, refusing to value or dis-value a life in terms merely of its gender. Huge victories have been won."
Issues like gender equality, social change and freedom of choice is said to be achieved through this medical procedure. The idea of engaging in ‘designer babies’ is endorsed in the United States, although our neighbours across the ditch Australia strongly prohibit this procedure because of ‘social reasons.’
