The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has announced that it will be pressing for a ban on using technological techniques to allow parents to choose the gender of their children. The Telegraph reports:
The British public has firmly rejected the idea of couples being allowed to choose the sex of their babies for purely social reasons. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will announce today that it is recommending a ban on social sex selection to the Government following a year-long consultation and an independent Mori poll.
[…]
Prof Baldwin also said the view that selection might “upset the balance of sexes” was not a powerful reason for preventing sex selection in this country and that few people were interested in selecting the sex of their babies. The recommendations were welcomed yesterday. Prof Alison Murdoch, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: “We think that it is important that this technique is regulated, and that the regulations take into account the real concerns of the public at large.”
[…]
Dr Michael Wilks, chairman of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association, said: “Sex selection purely for social reasons is unacceptable.”
So what we are being told is that the main reason for banning this technique is that it is distasteful to the majority of British people. Not that it is inherently bad, just that it is unpopular. This is enough for millions of people and all of government to justify the threat of violence against anyone who dares to try and order their private lives a certain way.
As a result, I am wondering why when someone says something else about another widely unpopular and abominated practice, far from the Tribunes of the People leaping to book legislative time in Parliament to pass more laws, they are investigating the speaker of these words for possible criminal prosecution. Speak out against homosexuality, even though only the most purblind would claim the majority of people do not find homosexual practices really distasteful, and you will find yourself up in front of the Beak with some explaining to do. Why not just give the force of coercive law to what ‘The British Public’ think about that too? Why not lend the hammer of state to every prejudice that is widely held by ‘the people’?
Next time you hear George Monbiot or Peter Hain talking about making society more democratic, I suggest you take the time to figure out what that really means.
“Dr Michael Wilks, chairman of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association, said: “Sex selection purely for social reasons is unacceptable.””
Errrr. How is deciding to abort a fetus after discovering it was a different gender than desired after an ultrasound test any different? Does the ‘ethics committee of the British Medical Association’ have the power to read peoples minds in order to determine whether their motives are ‘legal’?
This sounds suspiciously like “thought crime”, no?
Oh, great. Legislation by public-opinion poll. Watch for the upcoming ban on really loud plaid pants, Brussels sprouts and Peugots.
Those of us across the pond just got done with 8 years of this, during the adminstration of President Clinton, who couldn’t change his socks without consulting a public-opinion poll. Trust me, it doesn’t make for ‘ . . . Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. ‘
llater,
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We have an unexpected ally here, in Chris Bertram over at the hard left collective Crooked Timber.
And the post below it is of interest to Europhobes everywhere. Maybe there’s hope for them Lefties after all.
I’m not sure that this is so much a restriction on freedom, but a rationing measure for a medical procedure. It seems from the news today that we won’t allow elective C-section births in the future, and I think that in any case where something is “free” at the point of consumption there will be rationing by other means. It has been clear on all of the news reports that parents who want to select for sex using such procedures are free to do so outside of the UK health system.
This is a joke, right? 600 randomly selected citizens setting policy by answering a 10 minute questionaire?
Let’s ask those same people whether they think it’s a good idea to let 600 randomly selected people set government policy in an intensely private realm of their lives. What would the answer be?
On a more sober note, I recall attending a lecture some years ago by the social anthropologist Rayna Rapp about the effects of amniocentisis on public policy toward children with Down’s Syndrome. She asked whether there was increasing pressure (from insurance companies, social workers and doctors alike) for older women to have the test (there was and is) but also to abort fetuses who tested positive (again, there was and is). Then she took the radical position that this kind of social engineering is wrong, as it recalls past eugenics movements. But of course, there are ways short of mandating that all women who test positive must OR must not have abortions to guide behavior. Insurance companies can be forbidden from denying benefits to children whose mothers had the test and went ahead with the birth (which has been done).
Here’s my depressing question for the day: could you get a majority opinion (were the questions worded just so) to say that foetuses with DS should be aborted, for the good of society? I daresay you could, but it might still be the wrong thing to do. It might even be evil.
“The British public has firmly rejected the idea of couples being allowed to choose the sex of their babies for purely social reasons”
Did I miss a referendum? Surely the speaker of those words (it is not clear if it is the Telegraph’s own text or if they are refering to something the HFEA states) means that the Mori poll revealed a balance against sex selection. The British public has not been asked if they want to bank sex selection anymore than they ever are when their liberties are limited by government.
a little bit off topic:
“Speak out against homosexuality […] and you will find yourself up in front of the Beak with some explaining to do.”
That is now a reality in Sweden. Although the law is supposed to only be enforced on those who really say stupid things about them, like “all fags should die”, and they do so in the massmedia, it is so vaguely defined that Christians are threatened by prosecution if they preach on the subject and merely say it is wrong according to the Bible.
Of course, you can have any opinoin on Christians and Christianity that you like, but the point is that such laws, “hate-speech” laws, are not laws to serve, but rather laws to surpress freedom of speech.
The quote I found funny was this one:
Prof Baldwin also said the view that selection might “upset the balance of sexes” was not a powerful reason for preventing sex selection in this country and that few people were interested in selecting the sex of their babies.
If few people are interested in selecting the sex of their babies, how can it upset the balance of sexes? (As an aside, I would guess that the people most willing to choose the sex of their baby are those with one or more children of one sex who want their next baby to be of the other sex.)
Wait until scientists find genes that cause homosexuality, and parents have have the choice to ensure their kids won’t be gay. I can’t wait to see how the government-advocates-masquerading-as-bioethicists handle that one.
Hmm. I’m not sure if this as actually an area where individual choice is without potentially serious danger to society at large.
Many Islamic countries, for example, due to (a) currently rapid population growth (b) polygamy, have populations heavy on frustrated, testosterone-crazed young men who can’t find women. Which explains a great deal about the condition their societies are in.
China and India could well go the same way within a generation because attempts to restrain population growth, together with a strong cultural preference for sons over daughters, will again lead to a population heavy on frustrated, testosterone-crazed young men who can’t find women because significantly fewer female babies are being born now. Societies heavy on frustrated, testosterone-crazed young men are violent, unstable societies.
This is not a trend I would relish seeing spreading to the entire world – having it already in the two largest countries, with two of the fastest-growing economies and a significant share of the nuclear weapons, is alarming enough.
The preference for male offspring in India plus the somewhat widespread use of ultrasound to determine gender has resulted in a significantly lopsided gender distribution in several Indian provinces.
The thing is, this is a phantom dilemma. There are a few dodgy assumptions here which I don’t share.
1. The number of parents who want, say, a boy will outnumber those who want a girl by a significant degree.
2. So many parents will go for this procedure that an imbalance will occur in society
3. An imbalance is necessarily bad for society
4. Society’s (marginal) interests trump individual freedom every time.
For starters any gender imbalance will tend to correct itself every generation, it’s not like all these men will be able to go around inseminating each other. Also, for a noticeable imbalance to occur, gender selection would have to become an intricable part of every pregnancy and would have to reliably favour one sex over the other. It is likely that a social taboo on “arbitrarily” selecting gender would remain.
I suspect what’s thought most objectionable is that people might make any decisions more important than wallpaper colour for themselves rather than letting an official do it for them. After all the bureacrat will do it better, by bureaucratically approved standards of the general good.
As usual the actual poll results (available from the hfea website) are more interesting than the use they are put to, and seem to have been a teensy bit misrepresented. (How surprising!) 47% of the public had no idea what sex-selection was, unprompted. And it’s certainly not 80% who want a ban on sex selection: only 69% agree that it should be regulated. Considering more than half of them didn’t know what was under discussion at the start of the interview, even that weight of opinion ought to be taken cautiously be those who think that weight of opinion matters.
(Those like me, who suspect that 2/3 of the public will agree with any but the most emotive statement, will look in vain for the contrary question run on a parallel sample. I’d be grateful if any real pollster reading this can reassure me that compliant responses are a figment of my imagination. Otherwise I shall assume this particular “opinion” is a polling artefact, and the public doesn’t really think anything at all about sex-selection.)
Meanwhile, on the thoughtcrime point, hows this, from today’s Times Law Reports, Court of Appeals:
So now we have a second order of thoughtcrime: criminal guilt based on what you ought to have thought about the actions of a third party regardless of what they actually did.
Actually, the thought did cross my mind that this was a coded message to Muslims in Britain under the guise of being a general advisory.
Abortion could, and I am sure has, been used to practice sex selection. The key is in knowing the sex of your fetus.
If they are serious about this, they may well be talking about a ban on abortion “for the wrong reasons”, and an ancillary ban on informing parents about the sex of their fetus.
Is there anything up with which the British public will not put?
Alan Little writes: “Societies heavy on frustrated, testosterone-crazed young men are violent, unstable societies.”
Possibly. But I’d be wary of the suggestion that either sex-selection or polygamy is a big cause of frustrated male sex-drive.
There’s not much of either in today’s world. What there is is the widespread knowledge of the existence of sexual freedom in the West. This is envied and despised at the same time by men from more traditional societies, who often can’t comprehend that this derives from women’s sexual freedom not men’s.
What is rarely acknowledged is that sexual freedom for women has also produced male frustration in the West. The sexual lot of women and wealthy, charming, attractive men has been improved; but the unattractive man is relatively worse off than under enforced monogamy. In the past he would have have found a wife who would have had to to tolerate him; now he may easily die an old maid. I’m inclined to think that this fact is intuited by the Calibanic Taliban and accounts for at least some of their hostility to freedom for women.
In India there are so few women that women are now valued much more. Simple free market economics really.
This can only be good for womens rights!
I was waiting for someone to make the free market argument here. Good on you, Rob.
Incidentally, in the West (US and Europe) where parents tend to be older and richer than their counterparts in India and China, the preference is for girls (as they are seen as more docile and easier to raise).
Yes Kelli, my wife and I have discussed wanting girls, or at least one out of the 2 we eventually plan on having.
We were also talking about in utero testing for things like Down’s Syndrome the other night. We came to the (tentative) conslusion that if we found out we had a DS baby in the cooker in the first trimester, we’d probably abort.
Children already do enough to suck all of the life out of you, what’s gained by having a defective one? It’s not increasing the survival chances of myself OR my DNA, as they will not be breeding.
A bit cold? Maybe, but honest.
Guy Herbert writes: “What is rarely acknowledged is that sexual freedom for women has also produced male frustration in the West. The sexual lot of women and wealthy, charming, attractive men has been improved; but the unattractive man is relatively worse off than under enforced monogamy. In the past he would have have found a wife who would have had to to tolerate him; now he may easily die an old maid.”…
Guy,
Your argument doesn’t fit my experience, although that could easily be exceptional, but it doesn’t seem to reflect US demographics either. The differences in the standards of living between Europe and the US (the ‘first world’) and the vast majority of the worlds populace is beyond most first worlders ability to imagine. Along with the standard understanding of the advance of ‘globalization’, another social effect has been what a friend of mine (female) jokingly calls, “The globalization of gender power dynamics”… by which she means, a lot of guys we know married women from third world countries that by all accounts should be considered WAAYY out of those guys league. This has been especially true of corporate type guys who return from a multi-year assignment abroad with new wives.
Considered in old fashioned economic or match-maker terms, there’s a strong incentive for a well educated (or not) woman from a Country like Brazil or China or India to marry a British or Canadian or US citizen, at least for the length of time it takes for her to become naturalized herself (three? years in the US).
At the moment the procedure for sex selection is not proven safe so the ban is at least benign in effect. However, that won’t last. Couples who are able to travel to obtain their heart’s desire will do so. The law and the HFEA will, not for the first time, come into disrepute. When the procedure has been in full swing elsewhere for several years and when thousands of British couples have availed themselves of its benefit some wiseacre in Whitehall will finally say, “Hey, no medical drawbacks, no fundamental principle against it … maybe we should think this thing through again.”
It’s the British way.
So what we are being told is that the main reason for banning this technique is that it is distasteful to the majority of British people. Not that it is inherently bad, just that it is unpopular.
That’s odd. When I read the article, it said:
“much of the opposition to sex selection was based on … anxieties about a “slippery slope” where sex selection would be used for increasingly minor disorders“,
that “they had considered the possible damage to a baby who turned out not to be the desired sex“,
and that “Sex selection is the exercise of sexism at the most profound level “.
All of which sound quite plausible, pretty bad, and reasonable enough cause for the majority’s distate.
So what, Richard? That may be why some people find it distasteful, but that does not change the fact the regulatory body wants to actually ban it because it is unpopular, not for actually inherent ‘badness’.
I don’t follow. The article gives three distinct and substantive reasons for banning it other than “popularity”, which I have reproduced.
While there may be grounds for objecting to this decision, this article does not support your conclusion. Perhaps if you selected a text that more directly supported your view …
No actually, you did not.
But that is not ‘inherent badness’, it is anxieties… how is using it for minor disorders worse than major disorders or no disorders at all? Please explain.
Ok, not this conjecture (and even they admit it is that) is indeed ‘inherent badness’, but it was not held up as the main reason for demanding a ban.
Again this is not an issue of inherent badness but of opinion. Is selecting the sex of a child ‘sexist’? Clearly it is. Is that ‘inherently bad’? No, it is a value judgement… quite simply a matter of opinion. I discriminate on the basis of gender all the time, for example when I decide who I want to sleep with or the sort of language I use depending on the company, as do most poeple.
You gave one example of conjectural ‘inherent badness’ from a great long article filled with other reasons, all of which amounted to ‘uneasy’ and ‘distaste’. The opening line of the article in fact said “The British public has firmly rejected the idea of couples being allowed to choose the sex of their babies for purely social reasons” makes it clear that it was the MORI poll and not the wise ruminations of the ‘experts’ which was the main driver here.
Perry – I respect your views, but I suspect we are at best getting different bits of an argument mixed up.
how is using it for minor disorders worse than major disorders or no disorders at all? Please explain.
Using sex selection for avoiding sex-specific hereditary disease is different to using sex selection to avoid dowery charges is different to using it because you’d prefer a son. The three applications represent, conceptually, a slippery slope who’s slipperiness is governed to a large extent by the availability of the technology.
It is not unreasonable, in my view, to be uneasy about the commercialisation of the technology driven by a concern for the ease with which the slippery slope becomes traversable. After all, using nuclear technology to produce power is different to using it to suppress your neigbour is different to using it for terrorism. Same technology, different applications. Regulating that technology at its morally supportable end is a major instrument in preventing its use at the morally indefensible end.
This point is, to me at least, not complex and self evident.
Is selecting the sex of a child ‘sexist’? Clearly it is. Is that ‘inherently bad’? No
You appear to be unable to distinguish morally between choosing whom to sleep with (the person chosen or not chosen being unaffected by your decision – no offense), and choosing the sex of a human being (the person being selected dramatically affected). I’m not sure what more I can (or need) say …
The British public has firmly rejected the idea of couples being allowed to choose the sex of their babies for purely social reasons
Some classes of unease and distaste are without foundation in fact. Some are not. The validity of an unease based in fact is not reduced by the existence of types of unease without foundation in fact. There was a MORI poll. There was expert opinion. The MORI poll does not invalidate the opinion.
If your argument is that society is uneasy with the technology and therefore that arguments against the technology are invalid, then I’m afraid I fail to follow the thread of your reasoning.
My point is really simple… the fact people dislike something is not a good reason for making it illegal in the absence of ‘inherent badness’. Thus the fact people dislike nuclear technology being used for bombs to blow then up (clearly a caase of inherent badness) is materially different from disliking the fact other people use technology to select the sex of thier child for any reason whatsoever. The fact a person, or even a majority of people, dislike the fact some others have use this technology does not change the fact there is no objectively inherent badness involved. There are many things I disapprove of that others do but that does not give me the right to use violence (or deputise others to use violence on my behalf by voting for a law) unless it passes the ‘inherent badness’ test. Giving nuclear bombs to people who want to blow me up meets the inherent badness test, tasteless ties, rap music and choosing the sex of your unborn child do not because they do not directly effect me beyond making me grimace with distaste.
My remark about sexism was that just saying something is ‘sexist’ does not then make it self-evidently bad. Sorry I could not make myself more clear.
The article made it pretty clear to me that it was Vox Pop and not so called ‘expert opinion’ which was the clincher (or at least the justification) and so that was what moved me to write the article I did. That said, I would probably have written only a slightly different article if the reason for the ban was the sensibilities of technocrats deciding what was best in their view for society at large. No prize for guessing my views on adding flouride to water supplies.
The whole issue seems does not seem all that complex to me.
You don’t regard selecting the sex of a child as inherently bad. Apparently, because that choice leaves you unaffected. Some folks might regard that as a bit unpleasant.
As ever, I’m lost by the sudden slide into references to violence, and the equation of law making to violence. It seems to be something “liberal” folks do quite often, often when more substantial grounds for objection are proving elusive …
Perhaps I do not understand you. Are you saying a law is not designed to compel certain actions without prior consent via the threat of violence? If I decline to obey, will the state not use force?
Perhaps I don’t understand you. Are you unable to differentiate between “force” and “violence”? Isn’t it the case that all violence involves force but that not all force involves violence?
Is it your assertion that the state’s use of force is intended to effect injury or destruction, is undue, severe or harsh or is untamed? Then perhaps we are living in different countries …
I’m not sure I follow you over the matter of consent.
In a group of more than one individual (i.e a society), what should be the basis for deciding which laws we should submit to when it is almost certain that no law will be acceptible to every member of the group? What if I absolve myself from a law that you consider to be important, and I’m stronger than you?
Our arrangement of consenting to submit ourselves to the state in return for protection by that state is certainly imperfect. The fatal point to your argument, it seems to me, is that the alternatives are even more imperfect.
No. Laws aren’t designed to violently compel actions any more than vehicle brakes are designed to violently compel motionless. Cars fitted with brakes travel faster than cars without them. Societies with laws work more smoothly than those without. It is possible on a case by case basis to argue for the elimination of this or that particular law on the basis of your particular circumstance. But laws are created to ensure that societies are viable, not just the strongest individuals.
There are those for whom no law or restriction is acceptable. Those are, of course, the truly antisocial.
Are you actually reading what I writing? Let me try and make it more simple.
All I am saying is that all laws, whether justified or not, good laws or bad laws, Saudi Arabian Laws or British Laws, are just codified threats to send the boys in blue around to drag you off if you do not comply with this or that set of instructions… and that *is* violence. Force is indeed violence. That is unarguable. Try walking out of a court when you are on trial for something and see how quickly you get disabused of that bizarre notion. Laws are not optional choices, they are politically derived force backed mandates. Laws are force. Therefore, when a law is made, regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is, it must be understood that it coercive. Now this might not always be a bad thing, but do not kid yourself a law is not a use of force.
Once you understand that basic and self -evident fact, what I am saying is that as there actually very few areas of social interaction which justify the use of force without prior consent, there should be a great many less laws… and mere public sentiment, divorced from ‘inherent badness’, is no good reason for using force… i.e. passing a law.
Force is indeed violence. That is unarguable. Errm, no. Can I suggest you have squint in a dictionary? It quite succinctly explains the circumstances under which, when some types of force are applied, they can be described as “violent”. The root of the distinction lies in the nature of impetuousness, or liability to act without consideration, or impulsively.
Coshing me to the ground without provocation as I left the court could be rightly interpreted as violent. Restraining me from leaving the court need not. I imagine I would submit to the authority of a sufficiently raised voice without a finger being laid. Equally, if I resisted, I imagine I would be met with a force proportionate to mine and, if I were violent, I would be met by violence.
Yet you appear to be constructing the logical proposition “there are some applications of legal force that are violent, therefore all application of legal force are violent”. This is demonstrably absurd.
Having confused “force” and “violence”, you appear to then confuse “coercion” with “restraint”. Coercion can only take place when there is restraint by force against a desire. Not all laws are coercive as you assert. For example, I am required to respect the law not to enter your home without your permission. I am not coerced into respecting that law – I choose to respect it because by doing so I ensure that I am similarly protected from you entering mine without my permission. The law of trespass places a restraint on me. It can never coerce me. There is a law. There is no coercion. Your statement is falsified.
Some laws are coercive. The taxation rate is higher than my desire. However, I submit because the prospect of the anarchy that would ensue if everyone withheld their taxes is more nauseating to me than the prospect of paying mine. A coercive law is not necessarily an invalid one.
This is all quite important to the validity of your argument. I can see why it would be helpful to cast this in terms of violence and coercion. But have any limbs been broken? Has any property been damaged?
I think portraying the frustration you feel of not being able to do what you want, when you want, as making you the victim of some violent act trivialises the debate, insults those who genuinely do suffer violence at the hands of their states and does your argument a profound disservice.
The root of the distinction lies in the nature of impetuousness, or liability to act without consideration, or impulsively.
Coshing me to the ground without provocation as I left the court could be rightly interpreted as violent. Restraining me from leaving the court need not.
Rubbish. If I try to leave a court, I will be VIOLENTLY restrained if I do not cooperate meekly. They will use whatever force they can to prevent me from leaving. Violence is when force is used against your body with the intention to cause whatever state of affairs who person using force is trying to bring about (defending themselves, arresting you, murdering you, stealing your money, whatever). To say a cop who drags me off to jail without my cooperation is not using violence is preposterous. The issue of justification is quite apart, but it is violence, and that lies at the heart of any law. The term ‘violent’ itself is value neutral as you can have both justified and unjustified violence. You may not like that, perhaps you are one of those people do not like to think about a peice of beef in a supermarket as ‘dead animal’ but that is the unvarnished truth.
Are you aware of the distinction between “can” and “need”? There are indeed some countries in which “they will use any force they can“. Mercifully, we (or at least, I) live in a country in which they will use any force that they need. (I’m starting to have doubts that we share the same country).
While they can employ more force than they need, we have the courts awaiting our legal action and the newspapers our whistleblowing in the event that they do. So calm yourself.
If you are violent, you will be met with violence. What would you expect to be met with – tickle sticks and harsh language? Yet you seem to imply that you don’t feel able to control your behaviour in the event that you were restrained, that your subsequent violent behaviour would elicit violent behaviour on the part of your restrainer and that, therefore, since your violence was inevitable so is the violence inherent in the legal system.
A civilised person might believe he had more choice than that. It is perfectly conceivable for me to greatly disagree with my arrest without that disagreement leading to violence on my part and therefore violence on the part of the restrainer. A violent outcome is not a necessary consequence of the restraint of law.
If the source of your violent impulse is frustration at not being able to do what you want, when you want (as seems to be the case in this post) then you have a choice of whether to comply or not. But a violent outcome is by no means a necessary or even a likely outcome – it is one purely determined by your own choices and behaviour. To argue otherwise is to adopt, in my view, an unreasonably paranoid view of our society and one which does not appear to be very well rooted in reality.
There are arguments against a ban on sex selection-technology and I’d be delighted to discuss them with you. But an assertion that violence is or likely to be done to the banned as reason not to ban is probably one of the lousiest ones. Probably best to leave it, don’t you think, and move on?
(I admitted the imperfections of the present system and invited you to speculate on what reasonable alternatives to consensus might exist. You hinted intriguingly at a system based on fewer laws but did not elucidate the methods by which those laws might be selected – sounds like a great line for another debate).
First of all, I cannot be bothered to correct your notions that I regard all law as being backed by violence because I am unable or unwilling to control myself, as that quite a lot about your meta-context but has nothing to do with me.
So in effect your answer is that the law is not backed by violence because a ‘civilised person’ always has the option to surrender, regardless of how egregious the nature of the arrest. Presumably by that logic, if I hand my wallet over meekly to a mugger rather than resist, it would be fair to say mugging is not backed by violence either. Sorry, but civilised is not the word which comes to mind. Ovine might be more suitable or perhaps castrated.
As for alternatives to the present system here on what is not so slowly turning a Panopticon state… how about a Constitutional Republic with an armed population?
Presumably by that logic…
Well, let’s inspect your logic, shall we?
1. If {activity} is not backed by violence, then there is an option to surrender to {activity}
2. I have surrendered to {activity}
3. Therefore {activity} is not backed by violence
You assert that, since (3) is untrue for activity “mugging”, (1) is untrue for activity “arrest”. (In fact, you regard it as ovine and/or castrated to conclude otherwise).
Yet:
1. If I am in Edinburgh, I am in Scotland
2. I am in Scotland
3. Therefore I am in Edinburgh.
No. The proper conclusion is that there are activities to which you can surrender that are not backed by violence, just as there are places you can be in Scotland that are not Edinburgh.
(This is yet another classic non-sequitur, this time of the type “affirming the consequent”).
I have no idea what a “meta-context” is, by the way – would a predilection for testicular imagery and guns be part of one, by any chance?