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Couples in Australia having fertility treatment could soon be able to choose their babies' sex. Sex selection is only allowed in Australia when there is a risk that parents will pass on genetic diseases. The five-year moratorium on the practice expires this year and the National Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing whether to continue the general ban. But the Government is yet to be convinced it is the right move. Dr Sandra Hacker, chair of the council's Australian Health Ethics Committee, says the review will consider all sides of the controversial and emotive issue. She says previous consultations...

AUSTRALIAN couples may soon be able to choose the gender of their children for purely cultural reasons or just to balance their family. Australia's health watchdog is about to begin reviewing its ban on gender selection technology, with many fertility doctors lobbying for the controversial practice to become widely available. Professor Gab Kovacs - an IVF pioneer - is leading the charge, arguing that, at a cost of between $10,000 and $15,000, only the extremely determined would go for gender selection. "If I am prepared to pay for it out of my own pocket I can't understand why that should...

When a sonogram showed that Stephanie Lewis, a writer and party planner living in San Diego, was expecting boy-girl twins, she was ecstatic. Lewis, already the mother of a two-year-old son, had always longed for a girl. “From an early age, I just remember wanting a daughter,” says Lewis, an effervescent brunette who recalls a Pleasantville childhood filled with mother-daughter fashion shows, ballet recitals, and tea parties. “Now, finally, I was getting her. I was just in heaven.” Not that the sonographer’s revelation had come as a shock. For this, her second pregnancy, the 28-year-old Lewis had done everything in...

Starting January 1, Guiyang, capital of southwestern Guizhou Province, will impose China's first ban on abortion of a fetus more than 14 weeks old. The move aims to control the city's consistently lopsided male-female ratio of newborns, according to a top Guiyang official. Medical facilities or doctors violating the ban will face a fine up to 30,000 yuan (US$3,600) or have their medical operation license suspended, according to a regulation the city announced recently. Pharmaceutical firms will also be banned from selling abortion medications to hospitals or doctors that are not allowed to conduct abortion. Experts say the gender of...