Gender Selection Based Abortion Counseling Outed

By Kai Colvin - Senior Medical Research Editor | June 13th, 2012

Inhumane Acts — detestable offenses in that they constitute a serious occurrence on human dignity or grave humiliation.

The anti-abortion group Live Action released an undercover video this week, magnifying in on just that—an inhumane act by a woman, only identified as Rebecca, giving appalling counsel to a woman about gender-selective abortion.

"I see that you're saying that you want to terminate if it's a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?" states Rebecca, an Austin, Texas Planned Parenthood counselor.

"The abortion covers you up until 23 weeks," says Rebecca, "and usually at five months is usually (sic) when they detect, you know, whether or not it's a boy or a girl."

Planned Parenthood is an organization providing trusted health care, informative education, passionate advocacy, and a global partner helping organizations around the world.

Counseling is the provision of assistance and positive leadership in undertaking personal, social, or psychological problems and difficulties—not the assistance of terminating pregnancies until you conceive the desired sex.

In a released statement, Leslie Kantor, Planned Parenthood's vice president of education, denoted that “Rebecca” was in an entry-level job and is no longer employed by the organization. The statement continued to state, “she did not follow our protocol for providing information and guidance when presented with a highly unusual patient scenario."

Clearly.

The statement continued on strongly emphasizing, "Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for daily in communities across the country. Planned Parenthood opposes racism and sexism in all forms, and we work to advance equity and human rights in the delivery of health care. Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender bias, and urges leaders to challenge the underlying conditions that lead to these beliefs and practices, including addressing the social, legal, economic, and political conditions that promote gender bias and lead some to value one gender over the other."

The TRUTH about Gender Selection

Gender selection is available at fertility clinics for patients who wish to select the sex of the embryo used in their fertility treatment. For patients who want to be certain of the gender of their embryo, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is employed.

This is an intensive process that involves the examination of embryos during the time when they are evolving in the IVF dish. Once the fertilized egg has reached the 8 cell embryo stage (day 3), a single cell can be detached for testing. If a Y chromosome is present, this indicates that the gender of the embryo is male. This procedure has a 99% accuracy rate for family balancing.

Any additional healthy embryos can be used at a future time with the newest trend in embryo freezing.

While it is sternly noted that Planned Parenthood opposes sex-selection abortions and takes immediate action if it learns of an instance where a staff member has not fully followed policies or procedures, what anyone opinionates on abortion itself is entirely personal and a multifaceted dispute that is best left to individual matters.

To learn more about gender selection, find an IVF specialist in your area.