A month after Swedish health officials condoned sex-selective abortions, a new product in the United States may make gender-based abortions more common. While it is fairly common in the United States to determine a baby's sex by ultrasound or amniocentesis, the new "Intelligender Gender Prediction Test" allows expecting parents to discover their baby's gender as early as 10 weeks after conception and at home.
The product has been sold over the internet for some time, but starting this month, the test can now be found in your local Walgreens, CVS, or HEB. While this test sounds great, its serious implications cannot be ignored. In an article on the product, CNN interviewed Jennifer Parks, the co-director at Loyola University Chicago's Programs in Health Care Ethics.
"Say a woman has three daughters and wants to get pregnant one last time to have a baby boy. If she takes the test at 10 weeks, and it's not the sex she wants, she may want to terminate and try again," Parks said.
Stop the presses! A professor in health care ethics just suggested that a woman could use this test to kill her child if she didn't quite like the child's gender. Coming from an ethics professor, this seems rather alarming. In fact, the unethical way this product could be used is frightening. Using gender as a reason to abort goes far beyond any semblance of decency and ethics (read more in the May 12th edition of That's an Outrage).In the same article by CNN, the product's makers vow to never sell the product to India or China, where girls are much more likely to be aborted than boys. In reality, however, these tests will make it to China or India via the black market. In fact, the test could be a hit in Sweden.
These tests results spell trouble in the U.S. Already, nearly 20% of all abortions are performed 9-10 weeks after conception. With a large number of woman already considering abortions during the same time frame as the test, the Intelligender test could fuel a dangerous fire.
