DANIEL SCHIFF

CRITIQUING CURRENT HALAKHIC ATTITUDES TO EFFICIENT METHODS

It would be worthwhile, however, before Bettan 's responsum becomes the pretext for an unbridled acceptance of sperm separation sex preselection, to examine whether his criteria in fact address all current Jewish concerns over this practice. For, having arrived at Bettan 's"far-off day," the methodology now available forces serious consideration as to whether scientific soundness, morality, simplicity and safety, ought to be the sole critical Jewish specifications for evaluating current sex preselection realities.

One area which goes unexplored by Bettan and certainly has global implications is the issue of the potential societal impact of efficient, unchecked sex preselection methods. There is disagreement among scholars who study the developed countries as to the chances of such techniques leading to a significant gender imbalance in the first world. There are those who maintain that studies of peoples’ preferences in the U.S. suggest that the age-old cross-cultural desire for male offspring has waned little, and that if sex preselection were to become popular it would either lead to an over-supply of males, or at least to a much higher preponderance of first-born males.” On the other hand, some researchers point to findings which show that couples’ chief interest is in achieving a gender balance within their families. They further hold that the rate of commitment to sex preselection, to planned pregnancy, to effective contraceptive use, and to actually requesting males when using such techniques, would all have to be far higher than is probable in order to produce any socially deleterious results.’*® In relation to the third world, however, where the cultural value of having a male child is often overwhelming, sex selection abortions and other practices have already led to skewed gender ratios.’ It must be assumed that this would be exacerbated by the ready availability of techniques such as sperm separation.