Overseas pregnancies trending in Korea, you can choose the gender of your baby

On August 28th, SBS 8 News discussed a news trend of mothers going overseas in order to choose the gender of their babies during their pregnancy.

Choosing the gender of your baby even before the fetus is fully formed sounds like something straight out of science fiction movies. The process however, is being practiced in multiple countries and have very high success rates.

The process involves a test called PGD which checks the chromosomes inside the sperms during cell division and proceeds to conceive the baby of the wanted gender.

The problem is that this procedure is illegal under Korean law leading to numerous mothers who want a baby of a certain gender going through travel agencies who specialize in brokering a deal between US or Thai hospitals where the process is legal and practiced frequently.

The practice of conducting a PGD test is allowed in Korea only if the mother has a hereditary disease that has a high chance of being passed on to the child. The law however does not apply to mothers who go overseas to practice such conceptions leading to the rise in popularity of this controversial practice.

According to one such agency that acts as a broker for these over sea pregnancies Korean celebrities use these services. “One celebrity even used this service to impregnate herself with twins. One boy and one girl.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHPPtjO66Vw

[+ 813, – 77] People still care about the gender of their babies? Such old school ways of thinking ㅋㅋㅋ

[+ 701, – 67] The world is becoming great~Some one I know gave up on having a son after having 4 daughters in a row…It may become stressful..This isn’t a question of ethical morality think about it. If you really want both daughter and son but you have 4 children of the same gender, wouldn’t it be frustrating? Even if the chances were 50:50..

[+ 253, – 33] I am all for letting people go through this procedure after 2 natural born children.

Source: SBS via Nate