New Pregnancy Test Identifies Gender, Too is That a Good Idea?

WHEN I WAS PREGNANT, I could barely wait until the bun was actually in the oven before I needed to know what color to paint the babys room. Which overalls to snatch up at the OshKosh outlet. Whether Onomatopoeia would actually work as a boys name.

Now the market is paying attention to people like me. A Massachusetts lab has just developed a pregnancy test that will tell you if you are pregnant and if the baby is a boy or a girl.

For a mere $275, the Baby Gender Mentor test kit can detect the babys DNA in the mothers urine. The presence of a Y chromosome indicates a baby boy is on his way. Woo hoo. This means people can start criticizing your chosen name a whole four months earlier than they could when only conventional tests such as ultrasound or amniocentesis were available. Lucky you.

Or maybe not so lucky.

Medical ethicists are concerned that this test will be used as a tool for sex selection, especially in countries where people prefer male offspring. They worry that the test is just the beginning of using DNA testing to get information about embryos. They say a day will come when we will be able to pick hair color or height or whether the kid will have a high risk of depression.

Would we really want to do all that? Of course we would. Were human beings. Theres nothing we like better than making our own choices. We think we can make everything better when we put our own oar in. But how good will we be at making choices about our unborn offspring?

Sometimes we can be very good. Advances in prenatal surgery mean that some babies with heart and lung abnormalities can be saved, but that isnt what the ethicists are talking about. Theyre talking about designer babies. They are talking about Mom and Dad manipulating the odds so their baby is cuter, taller, smarter than Onomatopoeia might have been if things had been left to chance.

Thats so sad to me and downright cowardly for people who want to be parents. We may someday be able to map out every kink in our DNA, but that doesnt mean we should manipulate it for the most shallow of purposes.

There are scientists who are certain that DNA is the key to everything. That our whole lives can be explained by bits of chromosome.

I dont see that. DNA is not destiny. DNA is only an instruction book that builds the outer package and the inner mechanics.

A soul is poured into that package. We parents set it down in the morass of its own space and time and then hope and pray and work for the best.

Thats all we can do. We dont know everything about our kids. We dont have to. That is one of the lessons of parenthood, I guess. You take your chance and spin the wheel and roll off into a state where you hardly control anything.

And feel lucky, finally, just to have had the opportunity.

THE HOME FRONT

* Reach Jacey Eckhart at jacey1 @earthlink.net.