Ethical issues essay #1 : "Gender Discrimination"

Gender Discrimination

In vitro fertilization is a procedure in which a woman’s ova are removed from her ovaries, and a man’s sperm are used to fertilize the ova in a laboratory. This fertilized egg is then implanted in a woman’s uterus. This process has become increasingly successful with success rate of about 25%. Furthermore, these reproductive technologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Parents can now even choose the sex of their baby.
One technique is to separate sperm carrying the X and Y chromosome and later implant the ‘desired’ gender into a woman’s uterus. In another technique, eggs are removed from a woman and fertilized with sperm using in vitro fertilization. Only three days after fertilization, the embryos can be tested to determine their sex. This process can be done through prenatal genetic screening. If the embryo happens to be the ‘desired’ gender, then the embryo is implanted into the mother. If the embryo is not the ‘desired’ gender, then the life of that embryo is terminated, just on the basis of its sex.
This process can lead to many gender discrimination problems. If this technology becomes even more popular, what would stop people from only choosing to have a baby if their eyes were the color that they wanted them to be, or their hair color, or even their personality traits? In some countries this process is illegal, but there are no laws against it occurring in the United States.
Imagine if this technology would have occurred thousands of years ago, when females were not thought of having any value. If this process was available back then, would females be an ‘endangered species’. Growing technology has helped and saved many lives, especially in hospitals and treatment facilities, but technology is not without ethical issues of practice. Yes, technology has made life easier, as well as more enjoyable for many people. But if we keep going forth with these procedures, and not accessing the ethics of them, we could be looking at a very grim future. If different sources of technology can one day do everything humans do, what would stop the human race from dying out?