DANIEL SCHIFF

Up until this point, though highlighting different pivotal values, the traditional and the progressive attitudes to the extant methodologies have ­in practice- coincided. Both express philosophic approval of efficient scientific techniques for sex preselection, but demur at the current technological offerings. But when it comes to the question of a possible sex preselection procedure that is able to deal with the reservations already expressed, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the two approaches might well part company.

From the traditionalist viewpoint, it is not easy to see strenuous halakhic objections being raised to a sex preselection spermicide or pill, provided that the targeted sperm were not destroyed, but were chemically changed to negate their ability to fertilize the ovum. A case could sensibly be constructed based on the halakhic attitude to contraception. The halakhah broadly permits contraception in instances where pregnancy would pose a danger to the woman.* Indeed, there are even more radical views that would allow contraception if there was a threat of extreme pain to her, or concern for the well-being of her existing children.” The permission for the use of contraception by women who are at risk is based on an intensively debated reading of the classic Talmudic source and of what it requires of women who are in certain hazardous categories. Moreover- when it comes to the choice of a contraceptive method- there are certainly authorities who would sanction the use of agents to alter the sperm chemically, so long as its physical progress is not impeded. They see no hash-hatat zera involved, nor- since sexual intercourse proceeds in the natural manner- is there any sense of hotza'at zera levatalah, emission of seed in vain. Spermicides and pills, therefore, are allowed, but only if the woman is in one of the categories of extremis delineated; otherwise the commandments to"be fruitful and multiply" and to populate the world would apply.*

It seems cogent then that a number of traditional posgim would

probably approve of sex preselection spermicides or pills, by virtue of a comparison with the albeit limited consent given to contraception. After

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