Roles have changed for women immeasurably in the last fifty years. Girls were encouraged to knit, sew, embroider or weave. While these activities were necessary tasks for females in the past, they are less necessary now and leave women to accomplish greater feats. Today's women may choose, and are encouraged and supported, to attend college. They are able to go places on their own and are not weighted down by as many responsibilities of the household as they once were. Some responsibilities are still expected, but men are also expected to pitch in and help with housework. Also, women from all classes are also able to mingle freely with other classes and the opposite sex without fear of a diminished reputation. Men are much less threatened at the idea of women holding powerful, commanding positions because women have proven equality of the sexes. Equally well, women can roam the Internet, support themselves financially and pay the bills, root for a favorite baseball team, or even if fact, play on a baseball team. Many women have chosen to include sports and fitness routines among their lifestyle choices, recognizing the physical and mental health benefits of exercise. Women have struggled to earn independence and respect, and have succeeded. Women since the seventies now have a choice to terminate their pregnancy if they feel that a child will interfere with their lifestyle of simply, if they so choose.
First came the home pregnancy test. Now here comes the home gender test.
A new blood test being marketed that offers females the chance to find out whether they are having a boy or a girl almost as soon as they realize they are pregnant, as early as five weeks along. Just two or three days after mailing the test overnight to a Lowell lab for processing, a pregnant woman can know what color to paint the nursery -- or even decide whether to get an abortion if she wants a child of the opposite sex, a prospect that worries ethicists.
The $275 test works by detecting and analyzing fetal DNA floating in the mother's blood.
The test, called the Baby Gender Mentor™ Home DNA Gender Testing Kit, is meant for ''the type of woman who can't wait to open Christmas presents," said Sherry Bonelli, president of Mommy's Thinkin', the company that is marketing the test at an online pregnancy store. Ethicists raise concerns about sex selection, especially in societies where boy babies are preferred.
Sex selection in the past consisted mainly of using ultrasound tests and abortion. This is considered a growing problem in parts of Asia, and more specifically China. In its most extreme forms, back-street abortions, or parents killing girl babies, sometimes referred to as gendercide or infanticide. Gendercide is gender-selective mass killing. The term was first used by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Infanticide would include starving a child to death, putting poison on their breast for the baby to ingest, or simply leaving the child in a secluded place to die of exposure. America is different, of course. United States bioethicists and pregnancy doctors tend to discourage sex selection, with the major exception of its use by couples whose offspring may inherit sex-linked diseases. Sex selection ''may ultimately support sexist practices," according to the official ethical position of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
There is always the possibility that a woman could use the new gender test for sex selection but with the equality of the sexes, the concern should be insignificant. Currently, most expectant mothers have the chance to get a good, though not always guaranteed, idea of a fetus's gender when they have a routine ultrasound to check its health when they are about 16 weeks pregnant. Women who have an invasive procedure such as amniocentesis can find out the gender for sure, usually at about three or four months. Those procedures carry a slight risk of miscarriage, however. A blood test for fetal DNA, in contrast, offers a noninvasive way to peek at the fetus's genes.
Baby Gender Mentor hit the market June 17 with an exclusive announcement on NBC's ''Today." Fetal DNA gets into the mother's blood through the barrier of the placenta. The test includes a finger-prick kit for collecting a blood specimen, which is then sent to the lab for analysis. The lab examines the DNA and then looks for the presence of a Y chromosome, which only males have. Presence of the chromosome generally means the fetus must be male, and its absence means a female. ''The sex test is very controversial because it's not clear that you want to broadly facilitate the ability of people to sex-select embryos at a very early stage," said Dr. Charles R. Cantor, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University. ''It's potentially abusable." Acu-Gen Lab is the lab where blood specimens are sent and the lab's director, Yuri Melekhovets says that he is aware of the potential ethical concern of sex selection, but contends that the problem is not the product, but what is done with it. ''We supply the information," he said, ''and what you do with the information is up to you." China’s Government will utilize the new product and the information.
In China, it has led to an imbalance of about 120 men for every 100 women; and in India, one recent report from an affluent area of New Delhi found that for every 1,000 boys born in 2004, only 762 girls were born. The two biggest issues are clearly economic growth and the one-child policy. Both of these are ongoing processes, some more potential than reality. It turns out that these processes are very closely related. The one-child policy was “designed” to create a generation of ambitious, well-educated children who would lead their country into the “First World”. Some people in the China bureaucracy came to justify the policy on the grounds that it would lead to more resources being lavished on fewer children and thus a better quality of people. Despite a slowdown in its growth rate, China’s population remains the world’s largest, accounting for more than one-fifth of the world’s total population. In November 2000, China’s Fifth National Population Census counted 1.29 billion people. Of this total, 1.26 billion were on China’s mainland, another 6.78 million in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 0.44 million in the Macao Special, and an estimated 22.28 million in Taiwan and adjoining islands.
Furthermore, the 1970s had begun to see more serious attempts at family planning. Later marriages and smaller families were encouraged in national campaigns in the early 1970s. But it was the introduction of China’s one-child policy, announced in 1979 and implemented in subsequent years that had the greatest impact on the pattern of Chinese births and population growth. The one-child policy explained that couples could have one child only, regardless of the sex of that child. Multiple births were excepted from this rule. When couples could try for a child depended on the allocation of births made to workplaces by local population planning authorities. This program was characterized by:
- a wider use of contraceptives, particularly IUDs (intro-uterine devices)
- bonus payments
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A points system that gave priority (to those who cooperated) in the areas of future education needs, housing, and workplace promotion.
A mass education campaign emphasized that a rapidly growing population was threatening welfare and shelter.
There is currently an increasing gender imbalance in China’s population. The international average in a population is 106 boys for every 100 girls. In China the ratio is 116–17 boys born for every 100 girls. This is the result of sex-selective abortion through the use of ultrasound – officially banned but probably widely practiced in the cities and towns. It may reflect some female infanticide, although the widespread practice of an unofficial one-son policy and officially sanctioned second child has probably significantly reduced this practice. Based on official figures, there are approximately 40 million more males than females in today’s China. (China Fears Bachelor Future)
China is facing a demographic crisis. It is heading towards becoming a nation of bachelors, with official statistics predicting as many as 40m single men by 2020. The shortage of women is due to a traditional preference for sons, combined with the effects of China's strict birth control policies.
The newly marketed test option gives the modern family path for sex selection by way of conception, testing, and finally fetal termination. The cycle could take place a number of times until the desired gender is attained. This will lead into a new frontier of difficulties, a bombardment against the pro-life movement. The problem in which China faces today could possibly, and quickly, become the United States of America’s situation. We should learn from China’ mistake and figure out a way to differ it. As of June 17th, the day the Baby Gender Mentor™ Home DNA Gender Testing Kit was released, prior decision for the common family, whether or not to have a third child, became instantly obsolete. Also, single handedly, this product will decrease the average number of children in the United States within a short period of time. The idea here is that parents determining the size of their families and its sex substance, along with the free will abortion right left totally on the choice of the female, could prove detrimental to the economy and ethics of the world.
Steve Portillo
06/25/2005
Soc. 101
D. Kowitz
Final Paper
Works Cited
Emerging Parental Gender Indifference? Sex Composition of Children and the Third Birth
Michael S. Pollard; S. Philip Morgan
American Sociological Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Aug., 2002), 600-613.
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http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28200208%2967%3A4%3C600%3AEPGISC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B Wikipedia –
Baby Gender Mentor™ Home DNA Gender Testing Kit
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United Nations Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat - World Abortion Policies
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U.S. Abortion Policy and Fertility
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BBC news - US Exports Anti-Abortion Policy
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One-Child Policy as History (article)
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China Population
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China Fears Bachelor Future
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What Is Gendercide?
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Labor and Population Program - U.S. Abortion Policy and Fertility
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