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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Jennifer Lahl

The Center for Bioethics and Culture
Posted May 3, 2004

The Balanced Family
Biotech Style

Being the mother of four, I spend a fair portion of my time waiting in doctors' offices, in waiting rooms that are filled with pop culture kinds of magazines.
Recently while waiting for an appointment, I began reading a current popular weekly magazine. One article caught my eye. It was a story on families that were using the new technology of sperm sorting to help them choose the sex of their children - specifically, the non-medically indicated use of the technology for the sole purpose of gender selection as against what some would classify the medically indicated use in the case of sex-linked genetic diseases. Couple after couple talked about their unbalanced families, families where all the children were of the same sex and therefore unbalanced.

One woman's mother had recently passed away and she had all sons. Her defense of using such technology was she wanted a daughter to take the place of her mother. You have heard the rationale that a father needs a son to carry on his name and that a mother needs a daughter to shop and cook with.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine's Ethics Committee report stated, "sex selection might provide perceived individual and social goods such as gender balance or distribution in a family with more than one child, parental companionship with a child of one's own gender, and a preferred gender order among one's children."

To me what is really telling about this new rage of 'balancing' your family (and you thought balance meant good time management!) is not about the children we want, but more about the children we don't want. We don't want our children born in the wrong order. We don't want our children to be all of the same sex. We don't want our children to be uniquely created individuals but instead made for our purposes and our pleasure.

President Bush was right when he said, "our children are our creations and not commodities" We would do well to remind ourselves that once we have decided to have the children we want we have usurped the role of our Creator.

Reprinted by permission by Jennifer Lahl

Jennifer Lahl R.N., B.S.N., M.A. is Founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and Executive Director of the Bay Area Center for Bioethics and Culture, and travels extensively speaking to groups on the issue of bioethics. The Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC) is composed of Doctors, Nurses, Ethicists, Clergy, Educators, and other professionals coming together to educate and equip people of traditional Judeo-Christian faith in bioethics issues of the 21st Century, a century already christened "the Biotech Century," and holds periodic conferences bringing some of the best thinkers in the bioethics field together to educate and shape public policy. Contact:www.thecbc.org; Jennifer.Lahl@thecbc.org