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 Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Auriane Polge, Science & Vie [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.19.2025
L’idée de pouvoir choisir certaines caractéristiques de son futur enfant a longtemps relevé de la science-fiction ou du débat éthique. Aujourd’hui, les technologies de séquençage et les algorithmes d’analyse génétique repoussent les limites de ce qui semblait encore impossible. Au croisement...
By Charmayne Allison, ABC News | 09.21.2025
It has been seven years since Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui made an announcement that shocked the world's scientists.
He had made the world's first gene-edited babies.
Through rewriting DNA in twin girls' embryos, the man who would later be dubbed...