Dr. John Kennedy:

They are shared somewhat by me. There are situations in which one would want to select a girl rather than a boy so as not to transfer a known medical condition. That would be allowed for in the legislation. However, people are discussing family balancing. For example, should a family with three girls that is going through fertility treatment and is analysing the embryos anyway be allowed to select a male embryo preferentially from the pool of good embryos? That is one situation. The other is where there is a family history of a medical condition that, while not necessarily being absolutely on the male or female side, would have a preponderance in one gender more than the other.

Certain disorders on the autism spectrum would have more of a male preponderance so one might have a family with a child who is severely autistic and they want to have another child but they want to reduce their risk of that happening again so they want to have a female. In the UK that is not legislated for. I do have reservations. I do not like the black and white element of this.