Hollywood has just welcomed perfect two pairs of boy and girl celebrity twins.
In Australia, if you want that outcome – or want to fall pregnant and choose a girl or a boy via IVF, you may have to travel as far as Los Angeles.
“We know that there are people who travel to the US for sex selection,” says Dr Devora Lieberman from Genea.
The Sydney-based fertility specialist says the trip could mean women are putting themselves at risk.
“The stimulating drugs that you take for the IVF process you could be at increased risk of a blood clot and you compound that with a long-haul flight to California and it could potentially be quite dangerous and it’s quite onerous,” she said.
Famous women who have undergone IVF
Parents in Australia were able to select their baby’s gender via IVF until the Australian Health Ethics Committee ban in 2005. Their guidelines were said to be based on the interests of the child.
At the time, Dr Kerry Breen, from the Australian Health Ethics Committee, told the ABC: “We believe a child is entitled to come into this world without anyone deciding the sex ahead of time.”
Before then, fertility specialists Genea offered up to 150 cycles in sex selection a year for full paying patients.
“There was no Medicare or government funding of their treatment,” Dr Lieberman said.
“In Australia, in the UK and in the US – 60 per cent of couples who seek sex selection in the first world are looking for a girl,” she added.
Top Comments
I have 3 girls and I love them very much but always wondered what it would be like to have a boy. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do. Just disappointed 😞
The first world want girls and the third world want boys - either way it is wrong. The wealthy can already buy all manner of privilege, leave something to natural selection.
We've already seen gender selection in China where baby girls were aborted and abandoned thanks to the one child policy and preference for boys. There's now several generations of people where there's an enormous gender imbalance, with millions of men that are going to end up unmarried because there just aren't enough women.
I'm only a supporter of gender selection if it's done on medical grounds, ie if there are known inheritable diseases in the family that are linked to one gender.
Why do you think it is wrong? If you think it should be natural, then why do you limit that view to choosing the sex of the baby? If we should keep things natural then why allow IVF at all?
Not being facetious, genuinely interested in your reasoning.