JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — What if you could decide whether your baby is a girl or a boy, before they are even born?
Action News Jax anchor Chandler Morgan found out families in Jacksonville are successfully selecting their baby’s gender.
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Life is busy these days for the Schuman family.
“We have three boys so they are 13, 9, and 5,” Hillary Schuman said.
But Schuman and her husband wanted to try one last time.
“Unfortunately we did have two miscarriages after that within the year,” she said.
The couple sought out Brown Fertility for help in their pregnancy journey through IVF (in vitro fertilization).
“He said, ‘Well, you have three boys. Is that something that you’d be interested in?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely. We’re always looking into something like that,” Schuman said.
Schuman’s dream of adding a little more pink to their family could become a reality.
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“There’s those that have the ability to say, we’ll just go with the lottery, with whatever God gives us. And you have some couples that have different scenarios where they’ve had five boys and they want a girl,” Dr. Samuel Brown with Brown Fertility.
Like Schuman’s experience.
“But he did tell me there’s no guarantee,” she said. “We’re like, ‘You know what, let’s give it a go, see if it works.’”
Brown calls it “family balancing,” and he said there is the ability to take it one step further.
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“We do have the scientific ability to choose embryos in regard to eye color or some other things, but you won’t find a center in the United States that does that because we’re held to a moral and ethical standard where we don’t do that,” Brown said.
“If you’re choosing your baby’s gender, are you designing the baby, are you ‘playing God?’” Morgan asked Brown.
“We get that question from time to time, ‘Are you playing God?’ And we don’t feel like we are at all. These are God-given techniques, and God- given equipment, and God given procedures that we have,” Brown said.
Medical boards are split on the topic of gender selection through IVF.
A report from the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine cites arguments that gender selection could encourage issues like gender bias.
That same report also notes it’s a patient’s right to make their own informed choices.
IVF allows doctors to discover if embryos will likely become boys or girls, but at its core it isolates embryos with the best chance of producing a healthy child, according to Brown.
READ: Woman sues clinic after IVF embryo mix-up
“The medical goal is to have a healthy child and to avoid having a child with genetic problems or diseases,” Brown said.
“Have you seen a lot of people in Jacksonville asking for a gender selection for their baby?” Morgan asked.
“We do,” Brown answered. “But sometimes when they hear the price tag, they immediately say, ‘Oh, no thanks, we’ll just take what God gives us.’”
A price tag of an extra $5,000 to $10,000 on top of the IVF costs.
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But what about deciding traits, like if your baby could be born with no chance of developing acne, or having food allergies.
“If there’s not a genetic marker for it, then we don’t have the ability to test the embryos to see which embryos have that or don’t,” Brown said. “I think that it empowers couples, especially infertility couples that are grieving and are suffering because they want a child so desperately.”
Schuman and her family welcomed their girl.
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“I look back on it now almost as if it was easy, even though I know in the moment it wasn’t, but it just so worth it. She’s a miracle little baby girl.”
And her advice?
“Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Do what’s best for your own family.”
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