Normally about 106 human baby boys are born for every 100 girls.

It seems to be a permanent feature of the human blueprint.

More boy babies die young than girl babies and, by puberty, numbers of males and females are about equal.

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But things change  — in China during the years 2000-2004 the ratio was 124 boys for every 100 girls.

Soon, within ten years, one in five young men in China will be unable to find a bride because of the shortage of young women – a thing biologically impossible without human interference.

It results from increasingly available prenatal sex-determination technology.

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Meanwhile Australia’s Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing whether to allow parents using In Vitro Fertilisation to select their baby’s gender — illegal at present except when there is a risk of parents passing on genetic diseases.

Federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, says the Government has no plans to overturn the ban. “On a personal level I am very apprehensive about such a change,” she says.

Fair enough. Wouldn’t any normal person find the concept revoltingly impossible to contemplate?

Not IVF specialist Professor Gab Kovacs. He calls such objections “ridiculous”.

He says, “If a couple are determined enough to go through IVF rather than natural pregnancy to have a child of one particular sex, then it’s possible that if they have a child of the opposite sex, that child may not be as appreciated and well looked after.”

* * *

Yes, we have forgotten how revolting and perverse IVF itself intrinsically is.

At any one time there are about 120,000 fertilised eggs being kept frozen in Australia’s 50-plus fertility clinics. 

At present outcome rates, about 105,000 of these will end up dead – many simply discarded after their use-by date.

Is not each and every embryo a genetically-complete and unique human being?

Is not the death of any such human being — insofar as it results by the intention of those responsible — an act of murder?

Not a popular thought at sentimental level.  But can it be faulted, logic-wise?