The fertility industry has opened new doors for countless would-be parents across the globe, and it’s not just doors allowing them to have children. Thanks to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), people can create their children and then have them tested to ensure they meet all the right specifications. While this brave new world sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, it’s all too real – and using IVF to select the kind of child you want is becoming more and more common.
In 2021, socialite and reality television alum Paris Hilton announced her plans to use IVF to create her family, and choosing the sex of her babies was one of the reasons. “Well, we have been doing the IVF. So I can pick twins if I like. Kim [Kardashian] is actually the one who told me about that, I didn’t even know anything about it. And I’m happy she told me that advice, and introduced me to her doctor, so yeah. We have them all ready to go,” she said, continuing, “I think it’s just something most women should do, just to have. And then you can pick if you want boys or girls — just because I really want to have twins that are a boy and a girl. The only way to 100% get that is by making it happen that way.”
Hilton is hardly alone. The number of people foregoing sex in favor of IVF in order to have children is growing — as is sex selection. Though, according to the Daily Mail, sex selection is illegal in most of the globe, it isn’t in the United States, and it’s become trendy.
“The market is the size of the human race,” Jeffrey Steinberg, founder of the Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, said in an interview with Slate. He claimed 85% of his clients are drawn in by the idea of choosing their baby’s sex.
Sex selection has long been practiced, albeit not using IVF; instead, parents sometimes found out the sex of their baby during an ultrasound, and if it was the “wrong” sex, they sought an abortion. Though this has typically been a way to bolster a cultural preference for boys, Slate pointed out that in the United States, it’s become the opposite: the market is skewed toward girls.
Sharon Moayeri, the founder of OC Fertility in Newport Beach, California, does not market the ability to choose the baby’s sex as aggressively as Steinberg does, and therefore, said only around 15% of her clients arrive without fertility issues. Another doctor at the medical center at the University of California San Francisco told Slate that “single mothers by choice, same-sex couples, and families with a history of autism” were typically more likely to request girls. A study also found that white parents having their first child chose female embryos 70% of the time.
“When I think about having a child that’s a boy, it’s almost a repulsion, like, Oh my God, no,” one woman said.
Another argued, “Boy children tend to be less caring towards their parents. It doesn’t really matter if it’s socialized or biological. It’s probably socialized, but I can’t change all of society.”
READ: Study predicts global loss of nearly 5 million girls from sex-selective abortion over next decade
And because laws in other countries ban sex selection, thousands of people fly to the United States each year just to take advantage of this country’s lax fertility regulations. And it means big business for the fertility industry.
“It’s a moneymaking industry,” Laura Kerwin, a Harvard-trained psychologist, told Slate. “People need to realize that [clinics] have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make money. They’re trying to sell you on an option.”
There is little to no oversight within the fertility industry, meaning there is little to no information on what the current state of the industry is. “We do not even know how many frozen embryos we have in this country,” Margaret Marsh, a professor at Rutgers University, told the Atlantic, explaining that the last count — 400,000 — was 20 years ago. “[Today] we have no idea.”
The Atlantic also noted that 75% of fertility clinics advertise sex-selection as an offered service, allowing people to undergo IVF simply because they want to choose if they have a boy or a girl. Steinberg told the Atlantic this “service” makes the fertility industry approximately $90 million each year.
Steinberg also scoffed at the notion of increased regulations, saying it is “putting the handcuffs on scientists.” Then, using pro-abortion terminology, he added, “If there’s anything society should have learned, it’s ‘Keep their hands off of people’s reproductive choices’.”
IVF, though often described as a way to help heartbroken infertile couples to create families, has created a monster in which children are no longer treated as human beings, but as products to be designed, engineered, and then sold to the highest bidder upon demand. And as these embryonic children are products, they can be screened, destroyed, traded, and even turned into jewelry.
Any attempts to cut back on this commodification is swiftly attacked as cruelty towards the infertile — but what about the children being created? What will it take for the line to be drawn and a stop be placed on this reproductive free-for-all?
