Another article about concerns that the Baby Gender Mentor test, which
claims to be able to determine an unborn baby's gender at just 5 weeks
gestation using just a drop of the mother's blood, will be used as the
basis for sex selective abortion. Tidbits from the article:
- 2,000 Baby Gender Mentor kits were sold since the test was featured on NBC's The Today Show (that's a three week span).
-
Surveys of Americans show no general gender preference
- Baby Gender Mentor is available only in the United States.
- The chairman of the department of medical ethics at the
University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Caplan, doubts the new test would be
used widely in the United States. I doubt he knows very many pregnant women.
- Caplan also "questioned the lack of counseling for those who want
to find out the baby's gender". Hello? Where is the
counseling for women who are devastated every day at an ultrasound when
they find out their baby is not the gender they hoped for?
- C. N. Wang, Acu-Gen's scientific director, said the company is
"not ready to publish data on the technique and its accuracy".
That's really interesting, because every media outlet is willing to
quote Acu-Gen's claim of accuracy without verifying it with any actual
data!
About Maureen
Click to play the Fountains of Wayne song about Maureen!
"Maureen, you're givin' me too much information!"
My Kiddies
My DH
(And never had a fight!)
About Me
In 1999, my two sons were 4 and 2 years old, and we were ready to have another baby. I hoped to have a daughter, and I turned to the Internet to search for ways of increasing the odds of conceiving a girl. I discovered the iVillage Gender Determination Board. On the board, I found information about at-home and high-tech sex selection methods, but more importantly, I discovered I wasn't alone. I was one among a legion of mothers who longed desperately for a daughter, keeping it a secret so others wouldn't think, wrongly, that we loved our sons less, and feeling guilty becuse we're not supposed to care if a baby's a boy or a girl, "as long as it's healthy". There were, of course, also mothers hoping just as much to add a son to their all-girl family.
After a lot of research and soul-searching, my husband I decided to try MicroSort. In the fall of 2000, I became pregnant on our first MicroSort attempt, by IUI. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, we discovered we were having twins, a boy and a girl! We were thrilled to have a daughter at last, and a new son to cherish too.
During my journey to conceive a daughter, I was so grateful for the support and information volunteered by others on the boards; mothers who didn't even know me, but were willing to help me, hope for me, and cry along with me, when there was no one I could turn to "in real life". I know that without being able to talk personally with women who had tried MicroSort, I would have never gone through with this daunting, complex procedure; and that we would have never had a daughter as part of our family.
Now that my journey's finished, this Web site is just my way of giving some of that help back, to you.