Dozens of British women a year are flying to the United States and paying thousands of pounds to select the sex of their baby.
Dozens of British women a year are flying to the United States and paying thousands of pounds to select the sex of their baby, it has emerged.
As gender selection is banned in the UK, couples desperate to balance their family by adding a boy or girl are flying to New York or Los Angeles.
Earlier this year The Telegraph discovered that doctors were granting women illegal abortions based on the sex of their children. It led to Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, launching an inquiry in which
Doctors at fertility clinics check the women’s fertilised eggs and then implant an embryo into them – after checking that the child will have the required gender.
Patients from other parts of Europe are also jetting to the States to ensure the sex of their baby.
One doctor offering the service, British-trained Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, says he currently helps around 40 British couples a year.
Altogether he has assisted 400 British women since he began offering the service a few years ago.
Dr Steinberg, whose main clinic is in New York: “New York is only a seven or eight-hour flight from most of Europe, so it works very well for those from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the Middle East.”
Dr Steinberg offers a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
A welcome message on his website says: “If you want to be certain your next child will be the gender you are hoping for, no other method comes close to the reliability of PGD.
“While traditional sperm-screening techniques have a success rate of 60 to 70 per cent, only PGD offers virtually 100 per cent accuracy.”
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