Gender selection and phone sex

Photo by Luke Southern on Unsplash

Ok everyone, here’s a story to make you giggle.  

As a single mom alone, one thing I wondered about was gender. Is there an option to choose the sex of my baby and what are the legal and ethical considerations? Let’s first start with the facts: 

Is it legal? 

First of all, I asked my fertility doctor about gender selection and was told it’s illegal in Canada. You’re not going to find any doctor what will help you do this north of the border. In the US and other parts of the world, it’s not illegal and it’s not illegal for Canadian women to cross the border for this treatment. Now I should mention, sometimes there is a medical reason to find out in Canada, such as a genetic issue only effecting one sex. In such cases, it is legal for moms-to-be to find out and act accordingly. 

How does gender selection work? 

The way gender selection works is to basically do a round of IVF. You have to be on all the same medications and your clinic will harvest and store your embryos. Where Canada and the US differ is at this point. Here, that’s the end of the story. In the US, you can opt for a sex screen to determine the embryo sex ahead of implantation. At that point, you can select which embryo to choose.  

What are the ethical considerations? 

There are many. For one, it’s a slippery slope when talking about “designer babies.” Think the movie Gattaca. If we start picking and choosing traits in embryos, where does it stop? Today it’s gender but tomorrow it could be other physical characteristics.  

Another concern is it could unbalance the natural state of males and females in the world. If everyone starts valuing one gender over another, it can create an imbalance that will lead to problems for the next generation.  

There’s also the issue of what happens to the unused embryos, which to be fair is a concern regardless when doing IVF. Do you freeze the extra embryos, donate them, or destroy them? 

There are many ethical reasons to step back from considering gender selection. 

What’s the cost?  

You’ll have to pay for the full IVF round plus the screening test in the US. This typically works out to being about $20-30K USD. The sex screen test is about $4-5K USD on its own. If you’re Canadian looking at this option, you’ll also have to factor in travel and transportation costs as not every clinic offers this option and you’d have to go where it’s available.  

On to the story 

Alright so when I was doing my research I thought I’d call some of these American clinics to learn what the process was like if I choose to cross the border. I found one clinic that had multiple locations in New York State and would allow me to get across the border without needing a flight. Now this was during pandemic times so the border crossing was an issue all on its own. You were allowed to cross for medical reasons, however, and fertility treatments qualified.  

So I call up this large and well-known network and meet a cheerful receptionist. I tell her I’m looking for more information about gender selection and she asks me for some basic info, including about my partner. I explain I’m doing this alone without a man. Her tone gets a little snippy, but she transfers me to the nurse who will explain the process further. The nurse is helpful and goes over the IVF process and the risks associated with having a baby this way. She then transfers me to an accountant who explains the costs and how the sex screen plays into the process. After that, I'm transferred back to the original receptionist.  

The receptionist tries to book my first appointment immediately with a $500 USD deposit. I tell her I’m not ready to take that step yet and need to do more research first since I had qualms about the ethics. Since the website has no direct phone number listed, just a contact form on the site, I ask if there’s a number I can call if I decide to move forward instead of waiting on the contact form again which takes about 2 weeks.  

She assures me there is and gives me a number. She then tells me to select option 1 when I call it. I thank her and hang up.  

Fast forward a week or so and I have more questions I want to ask the nurse. Luckily, I have the direct number saved so I figure I’ll give that a go and see if the receptionist can transfer me back to the nurse.  

So I call the number. And. AND.  

I get a phone sex hotline. Yep. Phone. Sex. That happened. And what is option 1 you might wonder? It’s the number for horny women looking for a hot man. Cue the porn music.  

The receptionist, knowing I wanted to be a single mom by choice and didn’t have a male partner, SENT ME TO A PHONE SEX HOTLINE. 

I called it twice thinking I’d screwed up the first time lol. Nope, same breathy results.  

Sometimes I wonder if it was deliberate (probably) or if this girl called the number so regularly she got it mixed up with her place of employment (far more fun to think about). I guess I’ll never know.  

So there you have it. If you are thinking about gender selection, I hope you give it due consideration as it is a difficult decision to make. And if you decide to move forward, verify any phone number you get before you hang up! Or hey, press 1 for a good time. I'm not one to judge.