Should Parents Be Allowed To Choose Their Child’s Gender?

Should Parents Be Allowed To Choose Their Children’s Gender? Well, the fifty-thousand-dollar questions has to be asked after seeing Jayne and Jonathan Cornwill on the Today show yesterday, who spent fifty grand to choose the sex of their daughter through gender selection treatment.

Apparently similar to IVF treatment, and currently illegal in Australia, the Cornwill’s had no choice but to go overseas for the treatment.

Using IVF, Jayne’s eggs were fertilized with Jonathan’s sperm and only female embryos were implanted in Jayne’s womb.

The first attempt failed and the Cornwill’s were devastated but they tried again and nine months later a beautiful baby girl named Emmerson was born.

They mortgaged their house, flew to California, and proceeded with the gender selection treatment after the healthy arrival of their three sons.

I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn that the Cornwill’s have received significant backlash for their choice to proceed with gender selection. Their reasons? Among other things, Jonathon Cornwill wanted to walk a daughter – their daughter – down the aisle.

Jonathan explains gender selection is simply a variant of IVF.

“You can’t design hair colour, eye colour, height, weight”¦ it’s purely myself and herself being put together as a normal IVF procedure which many people around the world use.”

Jayne adds those who don’t have a need for gender selection treatment should simply not use it.

“I know that, to a childless woman struggling with infertility, I might seem ungrateful because I already have three healthy sons,” she said. “But unless you’ve experienced “gender disappointment”, you can’t understand how crippling it can be.”

Jayne partially blames society for pushing the idea of the ‘perfect’ family on us a mum, a dad, a son and a daughter but says that her decision wasn’t selfishly motivated.

“It’s not about playing God,” she insists, “it’s about giving women reproductive freedom.”

They have donated one of their male embryos to another unidentified couple.

SOURCE 9News