When individuals and couples consider using IVF, it opens up a world of opportunities and some of them are indeed very concerning.

First, the child is not created in the womb, but in a Petri dish. Parents can also know the sex of the developing life while in the clinical Petri dish, prior to its insertion into the mother’s womb. Most countries in the world prohibit sex-selection IVF. Not in the United States. People here can reject a fertilized egg (a new person) simply because it is not the sex they desired for their child. Slate magazine reports that many Americans incorrectly believe such choices are forbidden. They explain,

In reality, it has now become a standard part of IVF here. For some, the option to sex select is a perk of an otherwise exacting process. For others, it’s the whole point of doing IVF in the first place.

Slate informs us that Jeffrey Steinberg, the founder of the Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, holds that using IVF for the purpose of choosing a child’s sex brings in about $500 million each year for such clinics, nearly 5 percent of the $8.2 billion U.S. IVF market. Many are using the technology, Slate asserts, “to create designer families.”

The title of the Slate piece highlights a disturbing trend.

They warn IVF sex-selection “has expanded the concept of reproductive choice and bodily autonomy to for-profit procedures that will alter future generations” adding, “it speaks to a crisis in boys and lopsided expectations for daughters.”

Slate highlights a couple who are Bay Area software engineers whose companies gladly foot the very expensive bill for IVF. Even though doctors have assured the couple they can conceive a healthy child naturally, they are opting for invasive IVF because they want to guarantee they get a girl. The mother, whose pseudonym in the article is Lexi, expressly “longs to replicate the close relationship she has with her mom” and her husband values traits “more associated with girls.”

It’s like shopping for a car. Determine the features that fit your own interests and desires and place your order. People will get to work and deliver your request.

Lexi’s life dreams “seemed possible only with a female child.” She explains, “I was just like, How do I convince myself to do this” – to undergo the discomfort and hassle of IVF – “if this is what we want to do for our family?”

It was a conversation with work colleagues who had just done the same thing that convinced her. A very subtle, but powerful, psychology was at work here. “They normalized it,” Lexi explained, however she used a pseudonym, as Slate explains, “because her parents are unaware of her plans.” It’s clearly not fully normalized in her head.

The Slate journalist was able to find “15 women (and a couple of men) who are planning on doing IVF so that they can have a daughter.”

Another Bay Area techie desiring only girl babies employed IVF with this rationale,

We spend so much time micro-optimizing so many things in our lives, even micro-optimizing how much time we spend at the grocery store. Why not optimize having a baby, from the exact timing of conception to the shape of the chromosomes?

Slate adds that Lexie and her husband want two children, both girls. And they are not stopping at IVF to innovatively achieve their dreams of having it all:

They have signed with a surrogacy agency and are waiting to get matched with the woman who will carry and birth their elder child, buying them more time to rave, travel, and “self-actualize” without worrying about a pregnancy.

As the Church Lady would say, “Isn’t that special?” Their company will also cover $75,000 of the $150,000 surrogacy fee.

Slate curiously notes, “No one involved in making this happen for them has challenged or even asked about Lexi and her husband’s motivations.” Lexi said the professionals at her clinic’s attitude was, “This is business as usual, and we get money from you.”

The vast majority of U.S. fertility clinics happily offer, and many directly advertise, self-selection IVF on their website. In researching their story, Slate found even when parents don’t start out choosing to discard embryos based on sex, “Several people I spoke to for this story told me that their clinical intake forms asked for the ‘preferred gender’ of the child they hoped to have.”

This put the choice right in front of them.

One fertility clinic owner in Newport Beach California stated that up to 15 percent of her patients arrive at her clinic having no fertility issues whatsoever. They just want to the options IVF offers.

Doctors at the medical center at the University of California San Francisco admitted that while the number of patients using IVF “only for sex selection” was relatively low, Slate notes, “They did, however, easily point out several examples of parents who, once they’re already there, are more likely to request girls: single mothers by choice, same-sex couples, and families with a history of autism.”

The article cites another major clinic that aggressively markets their sex- selection IVF service and “estimates that 85 percent of patients are there purely for ’gender selection.’” Slate cites a 2009 academic study finding, “White parents having a first child picked female embryos 70 percent of the time.”

A big kicker in the Slate comes when they explore the reasons why U.S. parents using IVF are increasingly desiring girls. They ask, “What’s so bad about boys?” The answer: “’Toxic masculinity,’ said many women I spoke to, even those who were, sadly, already boy moms.”

This is a truly unfortunate turn in the values of our culture that should be mourned and rejected by all. Children are not commodities to adorn and accent our lives as we choose. They are God’s gift, His very image and likeness as male and female.

(And isn’t it curious that Slate simply accepts that children are objectively either male or female in embryonic form when writing about IVF, but forgets that biological fact when they play to baseless gender ideology elsewhere?)

Related articles and resources:

IVF: Moral and Ethical Considerations

Christians Must Consider the Moral and Ethical Hazards of IVF

Concerns Over Alabama Bill Providing Immunity for IVF Providers

The Commodification of Children: It’s Not ‘Conservative’ to Support Surrogacy

‘Our Babies Have Barcodes.’ The Moral Problems With IVF and Surrogacy.

Lesbian Couple Has Baby Boy Instead of Desired Girl and Sues IVF Clinic Saying It Was Just Like Rape

We Need to Talk About Assisted Reproduction

Why Focus on the Family Cares About the Gender Issue?

Yes, Sexuality and Gender Are Undeniable Gospel Issues