ArticleJournal of bioethical inquiry2018
Engendering Harm: A Critique of Sex Selection For "Family Balancing".
Article in Journal of bioethical inquiry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sex Ratios at Birth Following Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing in Victoria, Australia.Prenatal diagnosis · 2026Article
- Mapping ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of preimplantation genetic testing (PGT).Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2024Review
- Article
- Sex selection and non-invasive prenatal testing: A review of current practices, evidence, and ethical issues.Prenatal diagnosis · 2020Review
- Accounting for the Moral Significance of Technology: Revisiting the Case of Non-Medical Sex Selection.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2019Article
- The Power of Knowledge, Responses to Change, and the Gymnastics of Causation.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
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Abstract
The most benign rationale for sex selection is deemed to be "family balancing." On this view, provided the sex distribution of an existing offspring group is "unbalanced," one may legitimately use reproductive technologies to select the sex of the next child. I present four novel concerns with granting "family balancing" as a justification for sex selection: (a) families or family subsets should not be subject to medicalization; (b) sex selection for "family balancing" entrenches heteronormativity, inflicting harm in at least three specific ways; (c) the logic of affirmative action is appropriated; (d) the moral mandate of reproductive autonomy is misused. I conclude that the harms caused by family balancing are sufficiently substantive to override any claim arising from a supposed right to sex selection as an instantiation of procreative autonomy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.