Kiwis consider sex selection
Posted by Jesse Reynolds June 20, 2008
Biopolitical Times
In many ways, New Zealand has admirable oversight of human genetic and reproductive technologies. Its Human Assisted Reproduction Technology Act of 2004 prohibits reproductive cloning and inheritable genetic modification, and genetic selection is limited to preventing inheritable disorders. An independent bioethics council offers advice, a committee proposes detailed policy, and another committee regulates the fertility industry and must approve certain controversial practices. Violating the law is a punishable crime.
The Bioethics Council, known as toi te taiao, recently solicited input and released a report on genetic selection [PDF]. It recommends allowing prospective parents to use sex selection through PGD for family balancing.
While the fertility industry appears supportive, politicians are tepid and everyone else appears opposed. The New Zealand Herald - the nation's largest paper - found little support for the proposal from the "person on the street." The director of the leading academic bioethics group, Donald Evans of Otago University's Bioethics Centre, said that approving sex selection would be
The Bioethics Council, known as toi te taiao, recently solicited input and released a report on genetic selection [PDF]. It recommends allowing prospective parents to use sex selection through PGD for family balancing.
While the fertility industry appears supportive, politicians are tepid and everyone else appears opposed. The New Zealand Herald - the nation's largest paper - found little support for the proposal from the "person on the street." The director of the leading academic bioethics group, Donald Evans of Otago University's Bioethics Centre, said that approving sex selection would be
winding the social clock back in New Zealand by at least a generation and a half.... There have been huge battles fought in New Zealand for gender equality - that is, refusing to value or dis-value a life in terms merely of its gender. Huge victories have been won. [Social sex selection would be] very much against the spirit of these important changes. So I'm very puzzled that the report says there is insufficient cultural, ethical or spiritual reason to prohibit this, when certainly New Zealand has been moving absolutely in the opposite direction for a generation and a half. Maybe their inquiries didn't come up with any further evidence but they certainly chose to ignore this crucial social evidence, which is characterised by our society becoming a more just society over these past 30 or 40 years.The spokesman for Asperger's Syndrome NZ asserted that
Any hint of the heinous practice of sex selection being permitted will inevitably pave the way to genocide against communities with conditions that are preponderant in one gender or the other. It takes a rather thoughtless breed of eugenicists to recommend this thin-end-of-the-wedge approach to introducing what will end in tragedy if the recommendation is not killed off immediately.The editorial page of the Marlborough Express asked, "If this plan becomes acceptable practice what will be the next step? The answer is too disturbing to contemplate."