Latest news with #genderselection
News.com.au
05-07-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
Can you really choose the gender of your baby?
Welcome to Ask Doctor Zac, a weekly column from This week, Dr Zac Turner explores whether you can choose your baby's gender. QUESTION: Dear Dr Zac, I'm a proud mum to four beautiful boys, but I've always dreamed of having a little girl. I've heard there's new research and even special events around choosing the sex of your baby – but how much of that is actually true? I came across an article recently about gender-selective pregnancies overseas, which honestly sounded a bit scary. Is there any real science behind gender selection, or is it just another gimmick targeting hopeful mums like me? – Courtney 39, Gold Coast ANSWER: Hi Courtney, It's a great question – and a big one. Gender selection sits right at the intersection of science, ethics and deeply personal family decisions. And yes, you're absolutely right to feel like this is popping up more in conversations and even at so-called 'information nights'. Let's start with the science. The only proven way to choose the sex of your baby is through Preimplantation Genetic Testing, which happens as part of IVF (in vitro fertilisation). This involves creating embryos in a lab, then testing a few cells from each one to screen for genetic conditions – and in the process, revealing the embryo's sex chromosomes (XX for girls, XY for boys). Some overseas clinics – particularly in the United States – allow patients to use this information purely to select the sex of their baby. But here in Australia, that's not allowed unless there's a serious medical reason, such as avoiding sex-linked genetic diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Even then, it has to go through a strict ethics approval process. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines are clear: non-medical gender selection isn't permitted. So if someone is advertising ways to choose your baby's sex outside of IVF or for non-health-related reasons, they're either pushing questionable science – or bending the rules. You mentioned seeing events in your city. That wouldn't surprise me. There's been a quiet rise in 'fertility tourism,' where some Australian families go overseas to access services that aren't available here. A 2022 report on the ABC Health Report detailed this trend, and it raised some big questions around access, ethics, and the role of privilege in fertility choices. At the same time, there's a growing number of 'natural' gender selection methods being promoted: sperm sorting, timing intercourse based on ovulation, and eating certain diets to influence pH levels. I hate to break it to you, but the science just isn't there. A 2020 review published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online found no solid evidence that these techniques reliably influence a baby's sex. In reality, most of these methods are just dressed-up wishful thinking. Now, zooming out a bit – your mention of India is important. The country has long struggled with gender-selective termination due to cultural preferences for sons. Since 1994, it's been illegal for doctors there to reveal the sex of a baby during pregnancy scans, precisely to prevent this kind of discrimination. But enforcement is patchy, and in some regions, the gender imbalance remains stark. It's a confronting example of how access to sex selection, when paired with societal bias, can create deep long-term issues. That's why we tread so carefully here in Australia. A 2017 study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that the vast majority of Australians are opposed to gender selection for non-medical reasons. People are rightly concerned that allowing it could open the door to reinforcing gender stereotypes – or worse, shifting social norms around what makes a 'preferred' child. That said, I want to acknowledge how deeply human this desire can be. I've had many patients – often those with two or more children of the same sex – ask, gently and sometimes sheepishly, if there's anything they can do to 'try for a girl' or 'finally get their boy'. These aren't people with bad intentions. They're just parents dreaming of a particular shape for their family. And while that's totally understandable, it's important to approach it with facts, not false hope. So, is gender selection real? Yes, in specific, medically justified IVF contexts. But if someone's offering shortcuts – no IVF, no ethics review, just a supplement or a schedule – it's likely not backed by real science. When in doubt, speak with a licensed fertility specialist. They'll walk you through what's legal, what's ethical, and what's just clever marketing. Sometimes the most powerful thing medicine can do is help us understand what can't be controlled – and make peace with it. Dr Zac. Dr Zac Turner is a medical practitioner specialising in preventative health and wellness. He has four health/medical degrees – Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Sydney, Bachelor of Nursing at Central Queensland University, and Bachelor of Biomedical Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is a registrar for the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, and is completing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (UNSW). Dr Zac is the medical director for his own holistic wellness medical clinics throughout Australia, Concierge Doctors.
News.com.au
15-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
‘For me': Single mum defends banned baby act
An Aussie mother who has been the centre of controversy over her decision to choose her baby's gender has defended her actions on radio. Caitlin Bailey, from Melbourne, is a single mum with two sons and a daughter. However, she always wanted two children of each biological sex so she spent $45,000 to fly to America for IVF treatment that allowed her to fulfil this dream. Gender selection is banned in Australia due to the ethics involved, meaning Ms Bailey had to use the services of Californian doctor Daniel Potter via Gender Selection Australia. But, her actions divided public opinion — and now the 31-year-old influencer is defending her decision to do so. She told The Fox's Fifi, Fev & Nick that she knew she'd face a lot of judgement for going through with it but at the end of the day it was 'my body, my family'. 'People don't know me. The media will take what they want to take. I'd be silly to think they're not going to do that. I can assure you that I'm a good person and I love my kids. I would do anything for my children, at the end of the day they are the most important thing in the world to me. I'm not doing this to make other people upset or cause controversy,' she said. 'I purely made this choice for me. There are so many different arguments and opinions. It does hurt my feelings when I see negative comments. I don't want that, and I don't mean to hurt these people.' Ms Bailey said she documented her journey on her social media account, where she boasts 60,000 followers, because there was no one on her feed like her. 'I'm not telling people, 'You should all do sex-selection, and you should do this too.' I'm just saying it's an option,' she said. 'We've got the technology and medical advancement to make this an option.' Radio star Fifi Box defended Ms Bailey's decision, saying when she was going through IVF with her second pregnancy she thought it would be much easier to have another daughter. The Aussie media personality said she thought it was a 'shame' that Ms Bailey felt the need to defend herself. One of the big points brought up in the last few days is how much money Ms Bailey spent, which she said came from her savings. The influencer argued that she could have spent that much money on IVF anyway, and that she was saving money because if she tried to conceive naturally she would have kept going until she had another daughter. 'I think it's more responsible to do it this way than try to have another three or four kids, and if I kept having boys I would still feel like I wouldn't have felt that content feeling,' she said. Sex selection is banned in Australia, however it was temporarily available in New South Wales between 1999 and 2004. Now, the only caveat is certain medical exemptions based on gender — for instance if a couple carries genes for conditions such as muscular dystrophy, which predominantly impacts males.
News.com.au
13-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
Aussie mum sparks national debate after revealing she travelled to the US to seek IVF and choose the gender of her fourth child
An Australian mother has sparked a national debate after she travelled to the US for fertility treatment to choose the gender of her fourth child. Influencer Caitlin Bailey told the Herald Sun that she spent $45,000 to attend a fertility clinic in Los Angelos to conceive a baby girl. The mother of two boys and one girl aged between one and five always wanted two of each sex, so she contacted Gender Selection Australia (GSA) about conceiving another girl as a single parent. The clinic puts Australian families in touch with Californian-based fertility doctor Daniel Potter, who specialises in gender selection to balance families as well as genetic disease screening. Gender selection to balance families is generally banned in Australia, so hundreds of Australian families travel overseas to choose the gender of their baby via IVF, according to GSA's website. The practice is only permitted in Australia to reduce the risk of transmitting serious genetic conditions, diseases or abnormalities from future generations. Connect IVF scientific director Lauren Hiser said while it was possible to know the sex of an embryo prior to it being transferred to a woman's uterus, sex could only be selected in Australia when a genetic component was involved in IVF. Gender selection through IVF was available in NSW between 1999 and 2004, which Ms Hiser said was used mostly for family balancing reasons so people could select the sex they were desiring before pregnancy. 'Whenever people hear about sex selection, they are always very concerned that people are selecting boys over girls, that's the first thing that comes to people's mind,' she said. 'If you look into the data when it was available in NSW, between 1999 and 2004 the ratios did not change. 'In the patients that were able to select based solely on sex, they were actually choosing more girls and doing it for family balancing reasons. 'But sex selection is happening in Australia, it's just not happening within the IVF realm.' A La Trobe University study found that Australian families were terminating pregnancies following non-invasive prenatal testing to find out the sex of their child. Researchers found a cultural preference for sons among some ethnic groups led to more boys than girls being born in Victoria. The naturally occurring ratio worldwide was 105 boys born to every 100 girls; however, the study showed there were 108 and 109 boys born respectively to Indian and Chinese-born mothers for every 100 girls born between 1999-2015 in Victoria. La Trobe Judith Lumley Centre lead researcher Kristina Edvardsson believed some women may be terminating pregnancies after discovering they were expecting a girl and, in other cases, travelled overseas to access non-medical sex selection services through assisted reproduction. 'We know even Australian-born women and men can choose to go overseas and select the sex of their baby, but what we can see from the sex ratios in the Australian-born group is that it's not skewed to any gender,' she said. Ms Hiser said gender selection and whether it should be introduced to minimise harm was an ethical discussion. 'If there are people already getting pregnant, then testing a pregnancy and choosing to terminate, well, could we as an industry stop that from happening?' she said. 'Could we select an embryo before it becomes a pregnancy so people do not have to go through medical terminations or anything more drastic?' Ms Hiser said other international jurisdictions introduced gender selection as a way of reducing infanticide, backyard abortions and other things that could cause harm. 'We have a group of people in Australia that are looking for the services and are willing to travel internationally to achieve that,' she said. 'We have great IVF service in Australia that can do all that, but we are sending our patients overseas to jurisdictions that may not be as well set up, that have higher risks associated and certainly higher costs. 'There's a lot of ethical considerations to be had if we should be selecting for sex or not.' Ms Hiser said reproductive technology laws in Australia sent a lot of citizens overseas to seek treatment. 'People looking for surrogacy, it's not easy to do in Australia so they go overseas, certainly for sex selection and some donor situations as well,' she said. 'Because our laws don't support it, it's easier for people to access that outside of Australia.'
