Gender Selection and the Infertility Patient
Using PGD & IVF for Choosing a Boy or Girl Baby
If you are undergoing fertility treatment with in vitro fertilization (IVF), you can select the gender of your child by having preimplantation genetic diagnosis/screening (PGD/PGS). Some patients who have struggled with infertility and undergoing treatment consider family balancing because they’re already undergoing IVF and want to take advantage of the option of choosing gender via PGD/PGS. The primary indication for the screening of embryos is to help increase the likelihood of pregnancy by transferring embryos with the correct number of chromosomes (46, XX for female and 46, XY for a male). Reproductive endocrinologists often recommend this specifically to their infertility patients who have either gone through an unsuccessful IVF cycle or when the female patient is of advanced age (approximately greater than 38 years of age) and when chromosomal errors are increased. Because implantation rates are often higher when transferring euploid embryos (or those with 46 chromosomes), the ASRM recommends strongly to transfer a single embryo.
According to Phyllis Martin, a licensed counselor based in Fairfax, Virginia, “Either the clock has run out or they have secondary infertility. They’re in their forties. They’re probably only going to have two children. And … they think, ‘We’d like to have one of each.’” Martin, also a board member of RESOLVE, a nonprofit patient advocacy group for infertility patients, says that many of the people she counsels about sex selection are infertility patients. They know the technology is available and they want to have that choice. They have a vision of their ideal family and they want to bring it to reality.
See PGS and PGD Overview for the process of PGS with IVF.
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