Couples in the Middle East are no longer leaving the sex of their child up to fate, they are choosing for themselves.
With Middle East fertility rates dropping, doctors in the traditionally patriarchal society have recorded an increase in the number of couples using biomedical developments to choose the gender of their children.
While some are seeking to balance out a family with children of both sexes, it appears the majority are willing to pay the relatively high cost of the procedure to ensure they have a male offspring.
“People here in Jordan would rather have males instead of females,” Dr. Abeer Dababneh head of the academic department at the Center for Women’s Studies at the University of Jordan.
“More and more couples are deciding not to have a large numbers of kids and they have to have a boy. They must have a boy. This is cultural; boys are more valuable than females,” she told The Media Line.
This was echoed by Dr. Antoine Abu Musa, a professor and medical doctor who works in reproductive technologies and reproductive medicine at the American University in Beirut.
“Patients come from the regional countries around [the Middle East] and most of them are interested in having boys because they don’t have any,” Abu Musa told The Media Line. “I would say that more than 80 percent of requests are to have male children.”
The technique is called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis and it can be included as part of the process of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). The process was originally developed as a way of screening potential embryos for specific genetic abnormalities that could lead to the development of diseases in the future.
However, the technique also allows doctors to identify the gender of the embryo, and thus also gives parents the ability to choose whether they will have a boy or a girl. This option is having an impact throughout the Middle East where there is a strong cultural preference for having male heirs. This is because women are not allowed to be family heirs, nor can they carry on the family name.
However, gender preference is not the sole reason why couples decide to choose the sex of their child. According to Dr. Youses, an embryologist for Fakih IVF Clinic in the Emirates Hospital in Abu Dhabi, many couples are choosing to select the gender of their children for medical reasons or to balance out a family with a boy and a girl.
“The people who are coming have boys and want a girl or they have girls and they need a boy. They are interested in family balancing,” Dr. Youses told The Media Line. “Also, for medical reasons, some genetic disorders are transferred only to boys or girls so someone will choose the sex of the child that is not at risk.”
The procedure costs around US$4,000. Dr. Youses confirmed that the demand for the procedure has increased in recent years mainly due to the drop in the cost but also due the greater availability of IVF clinics.
Nationwide statistics on gender selection are not routinely kept by governments in the Middle East. However, Farah Hospital, the largest private fertility center in Jordan, recorded that the procedure was administered 500 times in 2009. That’s up form 380 procedures in 2007.
Also, a recent study sponsored by the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology explored gender preferences among women in northern Jordan. It found that 75% of the pregnant women participating in the study would have chosen the gender of their child, if they had had the opportunity.