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Emily Ko
Professor Jason Coats
UNIV 112: Focused Inquiry
March 21, 2015
Parental autonomy and sex determination
In today's age of science and technology, it seems we have a plethora of
technological advances at our fingertips. As Nicholas Carr, Pulitzer Prize finalist and
author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, points out the
omniscient Internet that promotes "'efficiency' and 'immediacy' above all else" (Carr 102),
we can begin to see aspects of our lives that reflect the internet's immediacy. For
instance, when we see an item we like on Amazon, we order it, ship it, and receive the
package in the mail shortly after. This immediacy is also evident in a new technology
that is expected to increase in popularity in the near future: genetic engineering for sex
selection. Genetic engineering displays a similar "wishlist" and "ordering" system that
we see on a site like Amazon; this new technological advance called preimplantation
genetic diagnosis (PGD) allows parents to choose exactly which gender their child will
be. In part because of the difficulty in reaching a conclusion on the humanity of an
embryo, the process of PGD seems unethical as parents in this scenario 'play God' and
practice complete parental autonomy.
PGD, which can be 100% effective, was first developed for parents likely to pass
on serious genetic disorders to their children but has since been noted for its effective sex
selection. Very briefly, the process of PGD begins with the woman who takes
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gonadotropins, a medicine that helps her "superovulate," or produce many eggs. These
eggs are collected after they have matured, then fertilized in vetro, and biopsied several
days later to determine the sex and presence of genetic diseases. The desired embryo is
transferred into the mother's uterus, and the unwanted embryos are usually discarded.
(Liao 116-118) Many parents are attracted to exercising their parental autonomy in sex
selection as well as to ensure genetic diseases are not passed on to their children. Parents
are specifically attracted to PGD because after choosing the desired embryo, there is a
100% certainty that their child will be the correct sex. However, discarding the embryos
are seen as harmful to children (especially if one sees embryos as the start of human life),
and there may be cultural biases that cause the male gender to be favored. This favoring
of male offspring contributes to the bias that PGD seems harmful to women and may
even contribute to population growth deficiencies and issues in later generations (Liao
116-118).
The underlying ethical issue in the discussion of PGD considers the embryo itself
and is similar to the arguments about abortion - perhaps a discussion too deep to
completely delve into for the sake of showing that PGD is unethical. The dividing point
in deciding whether or not an embryo counts as a 'human being' lays almost entirely on
where we may consider the beginning of life, or "personhood." Jeremy Rifkin, a leading
liberal social theorist and author of The Empathic Civilization, claims that we should
practice empathy and compassion for every human being as well as every other creature
on this planet (Asma 13). If we must hold some kind of moral obligation towards other
creatures (of different species), we must also show the same compassion and empathy for
a human embryo – especially one that may become the offspring of the parents
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(following the PGD process). Those who support PGD as a moral method of sex
selection may focus on the consent given by the parent for the child during many points
of childhood and apply this logic to the embryo, since the embryo itself cannot voice an
opinion or offer thoughts on its future. However, the embryo in question will one day
become an autonomous adult who may give his or her own consent.
James and Stuart Rachels, American philosophers of the late 1900s, ties our
modern technology with determinism, a sort of faith that everything and every being in
the universe happens as a part of the cycle of nature (287). We must, therefore, respect
the mere event of a human embryo forming. The consent not given by the human
embryo also points to the limits of parental autonomy as they 'play God' by "interfering
with the natural processes of reproduction (Liao 116-118). It is indisputable that parents
control various aspects of a child's life (what the child wears, activities the child is
involved in, etc.); however, parents do not possess a total power over the child's social
identity. When approaching non-health related decisions (such as sex determination), we
must consider those decisions that are reversible and those that are irreversible. The
dress, activities, and habits that parents impose on their children are reversible in
adulthood, and the child may choose alternatives, showing us that the lifestyle decisions
made by parents do not deprive children of autonomy. Sex change, on the other hand, is
completely irreversible, and children have no ability, for the rest of their lives, to alter
their sex (with the exception of very few cases of surgical sex change during adulthood).
The consequences of irreversible non-health related decisions thus indicate that we may
belong to the "great deterministic system" that Rachels and Rachels refer to in assessing
technology (287).
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As previously discussed, the very last step in the PGD process is to discard the
embryos not wanted by the parents - those that are not the desired sex or those that may
have genetic disorders. However, Peter Singer, a utilitarian philosopher and author of
The Expanding Circle, writes "that from an ethical point of view I am just one person
among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of
view of the whole" (Asma 12). What right, then, do parents have in deciding which
embryos they will keep and which ones they will throw out according to their own
interests and wishes? In his article "The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle,"
Singer also notes that, with the rise of technology, "we are living in an era of global
responsibility" and this global responsibility begins in our homes, where we "could be
confident that [our] charity would make any difference." We must, therefore, consider
those discarded, undesirable embryos, especially as the embryos are those stemming
directly from the parents undergoing PGD. Avoiding genetic disorders may be a
legitimate concern of some parents, but those embryos that contain said genetic disorders
need to be shown compassion and empathy just as Rifkin points out our moral obligation
to show empathy for other creatures as well. This very same logic (on genetic disorders)
may be applied, if not more, to the determination of the gender of an offspring, for can a
discarded embryo sincerely be at its own fault for being a certain gender that the parents
do not desire?
In 1999, the Constitutional Court of Columbia made a 'historic decision' that
prohibited doctors (and parents) from authorizing and performing surgery on intersexed
children, those who were born with both female and male genitalia (Greenberg and
Chase). The highest court in Columbia reasoned that the decision of sex change should
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be left solely on the child when he or she is old enough to make that decision. In other
words, parents must look out for their children's best interests instead of pursuing a path
like surgery in order to handle their (the parents') own insecurities about the sex of their
child. The process of PGD raises the very same issues as performing surgery on
intersexed children - parents view one gender as more desirable than the other and pursue
their own interests over whatever may occur by chance, or whichever event is
'determined' by the cycle of life and nature (Rachels and Rachels 287).
Advocates of PGD may argue that the same logic applied to surgery performed on
intersexed children cannot be applied to PGD, however, because the method of PGD
allows for sex selection to occur after the sex of the embryo is determined - individual
embryos are not specifically modified as other methods of genetic engineering may
display. However, the parents choose one of the embryos out of a group of 'suitable' ones
to be transplanted into the mother's uterus. The parents thus play a hand in Rachel and
Rachel's idea of determinism; in other words, the parents are still 'playing God.' It is
unethical, therefore, for parents to micro-plan the sex of their child while discarding the
unwanted embryos. Perhaps there would be more moral backing to the PGD process if
the leftover embryos were not discarded and were instead given to other parents who
hope to have a child. Even then, complete parental autonomy is neither an acceptable nor
a sustainable presence in a child's life and determination of sex.
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Works Cited
Asma, Stephen T. “The Myth of Universal Love” Evolving Ideas: 2014-2015 Edition.
Plymouth: Hayden-McNeil, 2014. 12-15. Print.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Evolving Ideas: 2014-2015 Edition.
Plymouth: Hayden-McNeil, 2014. 101-107. Print.
Greenberg, Julie, and Cheryl Chase. "Columbia's Highest Court Restricts Surgery on
Intersex Children." Intersex Society of North America. 1 Jan. 1999. Web. 1 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.isna.org/node/21>.
Liao, S Matthew. “The ethics of using genetic engineering for sex selection.” Journal of
Medical Ethics 32.2 (2005): 116-118. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
<http://jme.bmj.com/content/31/2/116.full>.
Singer, Peter. "The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle." New Internationalist
Magazine 1 Jan. 1997. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. <http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704-.htm>.
Rachels, James and Rachels, Stuart. “The Case Against Free Will” Evolving Ideas: 20142015 Edition. Plymouth: Hayden-McNeil, 2014. 285-297. Print.