Let IVF Parents Choose Sex of Their Children

By ROB MERRICK

THE head of Liverpool’s renowned fertility unit has called for parents given IVF treatment to be able to choose the sex of their child.

Charles Kingsland, the head of the Hewitt Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, told a parliamentary committee that the law should be changed to allow sex selection.

Mr Kingsland, the centre’s clinical director, agreed with the view that demand would be very low, because few parents wanted "either a football team or a girls’ choir". The alternative – couples terminating a pregnancy because a scan revealed a foetus was the "wrong" sex – was worse, he said.

The opinion flies in the face of a draft Government Bill which will explicitly ban parents from choosing the sex of their child, except in strict medical circumstances. Male or female chromosomes will only be screened out where inherited diseases – such as haemophilia or muscular dystrophy – are more likely to be passed on to one gender.

Last year, then health minister Caroline Flint warned that choosing a baby’s sex was a "slippery slope to people deciding one gender is more important than the other".

A Department of Health consultation found the public was opposed to sex selection for "family balancing", amid fears of so-called "designer babies".

A committee of MPs and peers is currently examining the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which will impose the ban as part of a wide-ranging shake-up of existing legislation.

It called Dr Kingsland to give evidence because the Hewitt Centre is the country’s largest NHS provider of IVF treatment, as well as accepting privately-paying clients.

During the evidence session, a Midlands fertility specialist challenged the ban, insisting the demand for sex selection would be "tiny".

Dr Gillian Lockwood said:

"I do not think this would be a slippery slope down which husbands and wives who wanted either a football team or a girls’ choir would rush."

The specialist added:

"Good luck to them. The alternative is much worse and that is what we are seeing.

"Couples who go ahead, get pregnant the boring, oldfashioned way, have a scan which determines the gender and have a termination of pregnancy."

Robert Key, a Conservative MP, then asked the other witnesses if they agreed. Dr Kingsland replied: "I agree with that."

The call was immediately criticised by the British Medical Association, which said: "The BMA is opposed to sex selection for social reasons.

"This is because the BMA believes this technology should be used to reduce suffering, not to satisfy parents’ desire for certain characteristics in their healthy children."

The Bill is badly needed to update a 1990 Act, which has been overtaken by advances in medical technology.

The legislation will also give gay couples the same rights to children born from fertility treatment as heterosexual partners.

And doctors will no longer be required to consider the "need for a father" when deciding whether to give fertility treatment for lesbians and single mothers.

In his evidence, Dr Kingsland backed that change, describing the right to a father as "antiquated".

He said: "I am not aware of any evidence that has shown that children are compromised by not having a father or a male role model within the family."

(c) 2007 Daily Post; Liverpool. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.