Private Hospitals Carrying Out Illegal Gender Selection

DAMMAM — Private hospitals are carrying out pre-conception gender selection operations and reporting them as IV fertilization or artificial fertilization in response to a growing number of patients’ requests, Al-Hayat daily reported.

Pre-conception gender selection operations are prohibited by the Ministry of Health although there are no religious prohibitions.

Sheikh Khalid Abdulah Al-Muslih said in his study on such procedures that scholars are split on the issue.

There is no religious text forbidding gender selection before conception, said Sheikh Al-Muslih.

Eastern Province Health Affairs spokesman Khalid Al-Osaimi said such operations are forbidden and would never happen in public hospitals. Sociologists believed parents who want such operations are looking to have boys, especially if there are none in their families.

Sociologist Saleh Al-Nimer said pre-conception gender selection operations have led to decreased rates of divorce in the Kingdom’s patriarchal society.

Many wives fear their husbands will replace them if they do not conceive a boy, said Al-Nimer.

The Eastern Province’s supervisor of private hospitals’ fertility units Dr. Essam Al-Hameed said these operations are not carried out in public hospitals, only private...