Review seeks public views on baby sex selection [UK]
By The Guardian,
The Guardian
| 08. 16. 2005
The option for parents to select the sex of their next baby to balance their family is raised in a public consultation document published today.
The government said that its review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 will seek views from the public on sex selection for non-medical purposes.
The review will ask whether the practice should be banned - as it is currently - or be allowed for family balancing reasons.
Sex selection is allowed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in order to avoid babies being born with disorders such as haemophilia.
But its use for family balancing was opposed by the fertility watchdog after a public consultation.
Now the government has raised the issue again in its wide-ranging consultation on fertility legislation, which has not been updated for 15 years.
The review will also consider, if sex selection was made more widely available, how many children of one gender should a couple already have before they are allowed to use screening techniques to try for a child of another gender.
Sex selection...
Related Articles
By Grace Won, KQED [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025
In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...
By Emily Glazer, Katherine Long, Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 11.08.2025
For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby.
Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup—called...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 10.31.2025
A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely create genetically edited babies, marking the largest known investment into the taboo technology.
The new company, called Preventive, is...
