I came across this yesterday when I was trying to find out what the guidelines are on abortion in Alberta. The discussion here is about how a physician should handle it when a woman requests to know the sex of her child early on in pregnancy. Quite interesting.
My thoughts on this are varied. While I don’t think there is an explicit right to know the sex of your child, I don’t think it is appropriate at all for the doctors to keep that information from you if they know it. And given that ultrasounds are routine, and, unless baby is oddly positioned, the sex of the baby is generally quite apparent to the radiologist, that they would keep that information from you because they might not like what you would do with the information is troubling to me.
I think it’s a big cultural thing. In the places the article lists (India, China, etc), they want boys. Gender selection is so awful that they are kidnapping girls.
In the West, we have the balancing act. Have 2 children: one boy and one girl. There are the comments (I have 2 boys): are you going to try for a girl? Another boy?
In the US, some states have laws that state you can’t have gender selective abortion. They are hard to enforce because abortion providers will ignore comments. And if you know the law, you can deny that as the reason. But perhaps it’s something Canada should consider having on the books. It’s a step in the positive direction.
As the other commenter pointed out, withholding the information doesn’t seem ethical.
by 
I came across this yesterday when I was trying to find out what the guidelines are on abortion in Alberta. The discussion here is about how a physician should handle it when a woman requests to know the sex of her child early on in pregnancy. Quite interesting.
My thoughts on this are varied. While I don’t think there is an explicit right to know the sex of your child, I don’t think it is appropriate at all for the doctors to keep that information from you if they know it. And given that ultrasounds are routine, and, unless baby is oddly positioned, the sex of the baby is generally quite apparent to the radiologist, that they would keep that information from you because they might not like what you would do with the information is troubling to me.
I think it’s a big cultural thing. In the places the article lists (India, China, etc), they want boys. Gender selection is so awful that they are kidnapping girls.
In the West, we have the balancing act. Have 2 children: one boy and one girl. There are the comments (I have 2 boys): are you going to try for a girl? Another boy?
In the US, some states have laws that state you can’t have gender selective abortion. They are hard to enforce because abortion providers will ignore comments. And if you know the law, you can deny that as the reason. But perhaps it’s something Canada should consider having on the books. It’s a step in the positive direction.
As the other commenter pointed out, withholding the information doesn’t seem ethical.