Parents could be able to choose the gender of their third child, to balance the sexes in their family according to fertility clinics.
A review is underway into Australia’s IVF laws, and clucky couples are currently unable to choose the sex of their babies.
However, fertility specialists are lobbying the National Health and Medical Research council to let parents sue IVF to balance their families with boys and girls.
The chairperson of the NHMRC review panel Ian Olver said the new rules would not allow them to choose the gender of their first child except to avoid eugenic diseases such as hemophilia, a rare bleeding disorder affecting mostly boys.
He said ‘’We wouldn’t want to promote any gender bias so that people select the sex of their first child,’’
“I don’t think there would be an appetite for anything that emphasized one gender over another and allowed people, for cultural or racial reasons, to pick one gender.’’
Professor Olver said Australians were using IVF clinics in the US and Asia to avoid the ban of IVF gender selection.
The Australian Medical Association has said sex selection for family balancing was ‘’not an appropriate use of medical science.’’
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