RT Article
T1 GETTING PAST NATURE AS A GUIDE TO THE HUMAN SEX RATIO
JF Bioethics
VO 27
IS 4
SP 224
OP 232
A1 Murphy, Timothy F.
LA English
YR 2013
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1781884501
AB Sex selection of children by pre-conception and post-conception techniques remains morally controversial and even illegal in some jurisdictions. Among other things, some critics fear that sex selection will distort the sex ratio, making opposite-sex relationships more difficult to secure, while other critics worry that sex selection will tilt some nations toward military aggression. The human sex ratio varies depending on how one estimates it; there is certainly no one-to-one correspondence between males and females either at birth or across the human lifespan. Complications about who qualifies as ‘male’ and ‘female’ complicate judgments about the ratio even further. Even a judiciously estimated sex ratio does not have, however, the kind of normative status that requires society to refrain from antenatal sex selection. Some societies exhibit lopsided sex ratios as a consequence of social policies and practices, and pragmatic estimates of social needs are a better guide to what the sex ratio should be, as against looking to ‘nature’. The natural sex ratio cannot be a sound moral basis for prohibiting parents from selecting the sex of their children, since it ultimately lacks any normative meaning for social choices.
K1 Sex ratio
K1 Natural Law
K1 Ethics
K1 assisted reproductive treatments
DO 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2011.01930.x