In New Zealand, Church opposes baby sex selection

A recommendation from a committee of Protestant bioethical experts calling for a ban on sex selection for non-medical reasons was voted in virtually unopposed at the Presbyterians’ biannual general assembly.

The Bioethics Council, a ministerial advisory committee, recommended in June that the ban on using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select a baby’s sex purely for social reasons be lifted.

However, the joint Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican Inte-church Bioethics Council declared the idea “undesirable” on social and cultural grounds.

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, Children, Ethics / Moral Theology, Life Ethics, Marriage & Family, Science & Technology, Theology

3 comments on “In New Zealand, Church opposes baby sex selection

  1. Terry Tee says:

    I have wondered why feministr enthusiasts for abortion do not see the contradiction in their stance.
    Woman A: ‘I want to terminate this pregnancy. I have two girls and I want a boy. I do not want to carry this child to term.’
    Woman B: ‘How can you do this? You are a woman striking against women? You are depreciating the female half of the human race.’
    Woman A: ‘Nonsense. I know what I want. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I choose not to have this baby girl.’
    Woman B: ‘You are not choosing. You have just been influenced by men and controlled by their prejudices.’
    Woman A: ‘How dare you tell me what I think and how I think. I know what I want and I certainly do not want to bring another baby girl into the world.’

  2. phil swain says:

    Apparently, the law forbids abortions based upon sex-selection except when there is a possible sex related genetic defect. So, you can’t be killed simply by reason of being a male, but you can be killed by reason of being a hemophiliac. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

  3. robroy says:

    Phil Swain, I believe the article is not about abortion but rather preimplantation genetic testing (PiGT). One is talking about in-vitro fertilization. One allows the fertilized egg to divide several times to a 16 cell “morula” stage or so. One takes away one of the cells and one can test for various conditions: aneuploidy (the most common being Downs syndrome), various genetic diseases, but also gender. One can then choose to implant the morula or not. There is not abortion, just not implantation of “defective” embryos where the “defect” might be the female gender.