is that there was a press conference yesterday.

The Prolife Aliance and the chrity LIFE are both mentioned in all three articles, and they all use virtually identical quotes. They probably found out about this and decided to hold a press conference complaining about it.

Also, the article in The Sun stated that the product was available for purchase online for the first time in the last week. (But the one in the BBC said that it's been available in America since 2006.)

I doubt it's anything very mysterious. But if there was a press conference held by people who are opposed, the makers probably don't want to make a big deal about it, so they are evading questions a little.

As for the product itself... I feel like this isn't necessarily a good idea or a bad idea. I think it will be mostly used for benign purposes, as some people want to know as soon as possible so they can start buying presents or redecorating or whatever. Some people may use it to decide whether or not to have an abortion, but I doubt they'll make up the majority of purchasers. I probably wouldn't buy it, because I think there's something to be said for surprises. But to each his (her) own.

I'm glad I didn't find out my kids' genders until the last/first moment. The suspense was the funnest aspect of the whole nine crazy months!

to start buying presents. People should be aware of the number of miscarriages that occur, especially as the age of the parents goes up.

Lots of proud "I aborted five times" women out there. Most are available via your blogroll!

Why ask us if women would use this for sex selection? Why not ask the "safe legal and frequent" crowd?

I hope you teach your children to use better grammar than that.

but what I don't get is why everyone doesn't understand that causing your child to be a member of the "surplus" sex will be bad for them and you. The sooner it is clear to everyone that you cannot effectively prohibit sex selection while allowing abortion for other reasons the sooner everyone can get on to dealing with reality. I am pro choice; people are going to have to be persuaded to voluntarily not unbalance the gender ratio.

If a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy, no matter what the reason, whether the fetus has serious developmental defects, or is not the sex that she prefers, or it has the wrong color eyes, she has that right. Unless Bush's Supreme Court has its way.

It's worth noting that the "Baby Gender Mentor" test came out a couple of years ago (with all the same controversies about gender selection and abortion) but is now widely believed to be bogus and inaccurate. There's even a class-action lawsuit again Acu-Gen, the manufacturer. I'd like to hear from a scientist or MD about how/if the tests are related. Has the DNA Worldwide test even been proven accurate?

http://www.babygenderinvestigation.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Gender_Mentor

Six weeks strkes me as rather premature, if only because GID-- that is, transgenderism-- tends to kick in afterwards, generally around eightish weeks in, when the "go be a boy" signal makes it to the body, but not the brain, or vice-versa (sorry, I don't have my reference in front of me right now). I rather doubt the method described in the article would account for that, let alone intersexed folk (1 in 1500-2000 births have ambiguous genitalia, according to the Intersex Society of North America). Why can't people just freakin' wait a few months? Or better yet, wait a few years, and see which way the child goes. They know. I did.

Kelly

I had read previously that the mother and the fetus have each other's cells in their bodies - what isn't mentioned is that these cells stay in the bodies for a while (indefinitely? not sure). So how, exactly, do they tell apart the cells from current fetus and cells from previous children/miscarriages/abortions?

Apart from the controversy surrounding abortion, let us consider the mentality and emotional maturity of a woman who would abort her fetus simply because she didn't want a(another) girl or boy. I'm not speaking of women in China and India, I'm speaking of women in Western countries who have the right to know and the right to abort. Perhaps these women would be better served by giving birth and accepting the highest bid from adoptive parents whose hearts crave the experience of nurturing a child.

It's not incorrect grammar. It's casual, and to be avoided in formal writing (which I would argue that this is not) but it's perfectly grammatical.

It's naive to think people do not already select for sex, and in many ways they always did. In ancient times, if you had a baby of the wrong sex (i.e., a girl) or a child unwanted in any way, you simply exposed it to the elements until it died. This was the norm in most cultures until fairly modern times, and still goes on in poor third world countries to some degree.

Institutions like orphanages make it possible to more humanely just abandon unwanted children, such as in China and Russia. In places like Brazil, unwanted children are simply left to starve or be raped on the streets.

In the US and Western Europe, it is generally more humane since we have the affluence not to allow children to die on the streets, to provide social services and foster care. But affluent people DO practice a kind of sex selection, to my observation, and that's through adoption. In adoption, you can often specify the sex of a baby, and many if not most do so. I have personally known people who adopted from China specifically because they were guaranteed to get a girl!

I can't imagine what benefit there is to knowing your fetus's sex at SIX WEEKS unless it is to accommodate an early, less expensive and less traumatic abortion for sex selection purposes. Seriously, you can't believe this DNA test is so that people have "early warning" to buy color-coded BABY SHOWER GIFTS? Or the parents can know to paint the nursery pink or blue? That's insanely naive.

People want to get rid of undesirable pregnancies. In most of the world, that means GIRLS. In some respects, it is better to have never existed than to lead a life knowing you were unwanted. But we also have to look at this over whole populations, and in that sense, sex selection is a disaster. In China, there is ALREADY a severe population imbalance where there are far more young adult men than women! India will eventually have a similar problem. What will this mean for these countries, and the world in the long term? Societies that are grossly out of balance are dangerous for everyone.