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plicit valuing of one gender above the other, to treating gender as if it were
a genetic disease, and to favoring other non-disease-related traits. ethicists
warn that when nonmedical traits such as hair and eye color and musical
or athletic ability become identifiable by genetic tests, parents may want to
select for these.
Two arguments favor allowing gender selection by PGD. The first
maintains that gender selection is just another parental reproductive right
alongside the rights to decide whether, when, and how to have children.
Parenthood already includes the right to nurture traits such as musician-
ship, athleticism, and scholarship with private lessons or tutors. religi-
osity, humility, competitiveness, and other personality traits can be en-
hanced by example and exposure to certain environments. selecting the
gender of one's child, it is argued, is not qualitatively different from exist-
ing, sanctioned parental activities like these. The second argument for al-
lowing gender selection is that family planning and balancing are legiti-
mate uses for PGD that could actually reduce the human population and
thereby relieve stress on the biosphere and on global society. for example,
family sizes would decrease for couples wishing to have just one girl and
one boy and who might otherwise have larger families due to a string of
like-gendered children before finally having a baby of the other gender.
Considering the vastly larger environmental footprint created by persons
living in highly industrialized countries like the United states or england,
where PGD is more apt to be used, reducing consumer numbers through
reliable family-balancing methods could become a nontrivial contribution
to planetary health.
some ethicists worry that widespread gender selection will lead to de-
valuation of one gender, even in societies that strive for the equal treatment
and valuation of all persons. Countering this is the notion that if parents
came to prefer one gender slightly over the other, the rarer gender would
increase in value, and preference would swing in the other direction. A low
amplitude oscillation of parental preference between genders over time
does not seem dangerous to society or to either gender. for those who fear
that gender selection would favor male children, a 1970s poll of married
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