Is Sex Selecting Children Wrong?

Tough call, very interesting article and another in a series of interesting questions you've posed recently.

On the first part of your argument, it is not my responsibility to ensure the global gender balance in the world and the comment that the optimum balance of male to female is 1:1 doesn't match nature where the balance is very slightly male and subscribes to a particular family model of husband and wife. I'm sure there are parts of the world or times in history people might have said the optimum balance was one male to two or three women. While females are preferentially aborted in some countries, the article pointed out the wealthy caucasians tend to select for females so there it is males being screened out. If you are just talking gender, you would think that this is somewhat self correcting. A shortage of women should make women more desireable and eliminate practices like having to pay a dowry to marry off a daughter. I think the reality is much more complex and clearly we are early in this process since the technology is moving much faster than any demographic shift that might counter it.

As part of a larger issue, I see sex selection as similar to eugenics. If you can select for sex, why not eye color? As we learn more about genetics, you might be able to select for height, intelligence, propensity for cancer, etc. Do we really want to eliminate whole categories of humans for aesthetics? If everyone is beautiful no one is. If we screen out anyone who is subject to depression or autistism, do we stiffle the cutting edge of humanity where art and science innovation is most pronounced? Every super great mind and athlete is in some way a genetic freak.

I think these changes are coming and in general I think they are not good. Forget the issue of selective abortion since that ties into abortion in general, think about selective fertilization. What's wrong with sorting through 10 million sperm to five million you want. Or maybe just 1 million that will likely give you a healthy, beautiful boy with Dad's classic good looks and Mom's sharp mind. Humanity becomes a manufacturing process where we start with well defined raw materials to make babies, process them through a consistent education system and pump out uniform adults. I think that works well for cars where I want every Camry to be interchangable with every other Camry, but not with people where diversity drives society.

Foolish perhaps, although i wouldn't call it wrong. Mostly, it's just an example of tragic stupidity.

Not always but usually female and male children are much different, the gender mix and birth order greatly impact family dynamics as well as the lie of each child. How do you get to that wanting to choose when technology give one the ability is "tragic stupidity"?

It's really pathetic that you need these things explained to you. The one nation where both 'therapeutic abortion" based on gender and female infanticide coincide with technological sophistication is India. The use of "therapeutic abortion" has greatly reduced female infanticide, although it has not been eliminated. This is tragically stupid because unchecked, the choosing of male children over female over time will leave those wonderful male children with fewer and fewer options to marry and reproduce. Then where will they get their precious sons?

i think the ultimate solution is for everyone to stop having kids, the world would be a perfect place in about 100 years

I am not concerned about lowering the population, as that would be a good thing, but I am concerned that we have too many males chasing too few females. It is not just sex selection and infanticide to does away with females that causes this problem though, it is also the embrace of homosexuality the the gaining acceptance of polygamy which is normally practiced with one male taking several females which cause the problems. The feminists driving the message that mating with males is bad for females does not help matters.

The gender imbalance is a bad thing because women already are more empowered than are men and being in high demand for mating only gives them more power to set terms in relationship. Also the increasing competition for females will cause men to be more aggressive, which to a point would not be a bad thing with all the emasculated men we have running around today, but this is still a dangerous way to go.

I have some hope that Engineer is correct that middle and upper class Americans would tend to select for females because they are more fun to raise and because females are better off than are men in American society today, and that at least in American the gender imbalance in numbers would not get too bad.

so let me see if i have this right, about a year or so ago you were moaning how there are no "men" left for women to marry, now there are going to be no women for men, shouldn't the two problems work themselves out

I never said anything close to that, though we did talk about men who would rather stay home play video games/jack-off and we have talked about Japanese Herbivore men. In my opinion these are men who are too beat down to go after women, it is not something that I wish to see continue, nor encourage.

There is just about nothing in this drivel that i can even remotely agree with. No surprise there . . .

Yet a another lazy pronouncement where you dont show your work...No surprise there.....

I was responding to a post in which you just ranted out another idiot screed, in which type of polemic you never "show your work." What a pompous and hypocritical asshole. No surprise there.

Is that available on Playstation or X box?

no, psp, nintendo ds or mobile phone, it's a handheld game

If you mind your own business then you won't be minding hers.

This is about the tragedy that's happening right now, because women are not valued as highly as men. Abortion is bad enough, but more disturbing are the girls who are born and left to die.

This is not about the dominance of women, or the dangers of unrestrained lesbianism. Hawkeye hasn't so much missed the point, as run away screaming from it.

Who is her? SET? He is more arrogant bastard than sissy-boy.

the polling on that is here

http://www.gallup.com/poll/148187/americans-prefer-boys-girls-1941.aspx

You've decided to talk about an American problem, by using an example of an Indian immigrant. How focussed is that?

sex selecting happens all around the world, as other counties have the technology too. It also is getting much cheaper. However, I care most about those closest to me, I care much more what happens in America than I do what happens in India. I am holding out hope that the negative consequences will not be as bad in America, if sex selection is not a problem in America than I mostly dont care about it....the one million or what ever the number is girls who are alleged to be missing in India is not my problem.