It Isn't Just in China & India...

..... but also apparently right here in the good ol' U.S.A., where babies are being screened for purposes of sex selection.  CNN reports that the first comprehensive survey of fertility clinics in the U.S. reveals that

A whopping 42 percent of clinics that offer PGD [pre-implantation genetic diagnosis] said they had done so for non-medically related sex selection. Nearly half of those clinics said they would only offer sex selection for a second or subsequent child.

"That's really startling," University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan said of the high number of PGD for sex selection alone. "Family balancing seems like a morally persuasive reason to some people," but doing gender selection just because a couple doesn't want any girls, or any boys, is troubling, he said.

One doctor who offers it takes a different view.

"It performs a much desired service. We're making people happy," said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Guadalajara, Mexico.

Many countries ban PGD or restrict it to prevention of serious inherited diseases. Many people from foreign countries travel to the United States to obtain it, especially from countries like China and Canada.

I find a sad, sad, irony in the mental image of Chinese couples travelling to the United States, and then leaving this country "happy" because they have been permitted to select out, leave behind, and almost certainly destroy, their female embryos.

Lisa