Roy Morgan poll shows most Aussies oppose sex selection for babies A majority of Australians oppose gender selection. AUSTRALIAN parents who want to choose the gender of their children have been locked into expensive overseas treatments after a push by local fertility specialists to green-light the controversial technique has stalled. The first comprehensive poll of the nation's attitudes towards gender selection shows only one in five people support the technique. The findings reveal the public is significantly out of step with the opinions of the country's leading IVF doctors, who almost universally believe the option should be available to all parents. One of the country's leading IVF experts, Professor Gab Kovacs, who initiated the polling, said it appeared the nation simply had too many ethical reservations about gender selection and were afraid it would create a slippery slope to designer babies. The poll by Roy Morgan Research found Australians overwhelmingly supported IVF but the vast majority were opposed to gender selection, even for family balancing. Professor Gab Kovacs surrounded by Olivia Preston, 7, Nathan Harper, 6, and Tom Preston, 7. I thought the community would support it. I thought it would have been about 50-50 (for and against family balancing)," said Prof Kovacs, the international medical director of Monash IVF. But after the results revealed "such overwhelming negativity," he has abandoned any hope of reversing the guidelines that govern IVF in Australia that 10 years ago were changed to outlaw gender selection. The restrictions frustrate a growing number of families like Jodi and Andrew McMahon, who spent close to $50,000 travelling to the United States to add two baby girls to their brood. The couple from Tumut, in NSW, is one of more than an estimated 100 in Australia who travel predominantly to the US, Cyprus and Thailand every year for the right to choose their baby's gender. The McMahons were proud parents to seven sons but Jodi longed for a mother-daughter bond. Two years ago she gave birth to their first daughter, Addison, followed almost a year ago by their second, Evie, who was conceived with extra embryo taken by the American clinic that impregnated her the first time. We had seven boys, there wasn't really much hope of us ever having a girl naturally. It comes down to individual families (and) it doesn't affect anyone but yourself," Mrs McMahon said. At the end of the day it was right for us so we did it and if you don't like it then don't talk about it, don't get involved in it. Prof Kovacs described as "nonsense" the justification in the official guidelines that allowing gender selection risked unbalancing the population or opened up potential for bias against girls. In the past, most Australian parents choosing their baby's gender opted for a girl and not enough babies were born through IVF to unbalance the population, he said. Professor Julian Savulescu. Picture: Polly Borland Source: Supplied Professor Julian Savulescu, a Romanian-Australian philosopher and bioethicist at Oxford University, said opponents to gender selection were never confronted by people who it mattered to and instead pictured countries like China or India with "vast sex imbalances." Associate Professor Rob Sparrow, of Monash University's philosophy department, said he opposed sex selection because it allowed prejudice. "Lots of people have an intuition that we shouldn't be discriminating in choosing who comes into the world ... that we shouldn't be using technology in the service of bigotry (and) sex selection looks very close to that," he said. Dr David Molloy, the medical director of Queensland Fertility Group, said he felt sorry for the couples who consult with him every week who are desperate to balance their family by choosing the gender of their next child. Sadly, most are "forced offshore, often at great expense and often at some personal risk as well," he said. What's happened with gender selection is patients now just go offshore, they go to the US and pay their $30,000 or go to Thailand or wherever and pay for the service that isn't available in Australia. Dr Molloy said the separation between gender selection and regulations to stop designer babies in the future was "a difficult line to draw" but he was confident ethical debates would ensure the integrity of the industry as new technologies became available. "A level of gender selection I'm comfortable with is for family balancing ... (and) we often restrict (the use of technology) to maintain an ethical high ground," he said. Associate Professor Peter Illingworth, the medical director of IVF Australia, said he expected Australians to maintain "very conservative" views about IVF technologies in the future. "I don't see that changing very much in the next few years," he said. I don't see any harm in (gender selection to balance families). I think a lot of us do see the difficulties of couples' experience when they're simply trying to balance their families (and) we're sympathetic to their views. Parents seeking IVF "have a good sense of perspective about the whole thing and will love whichever child they have," he said. But there are many ... who, for legitimate reasons, want to balance their family. I think that's still a reasonable thing to achieve. THE RULES Source: News Limited Ethical guidelines for the clinical practice of Assisted Reproductive Technology Guidelines stipulate "life should not be conditional upon a child being a particular sex" Incompatible with the parent-child relationship being one that involves unconditional acceptance May be an expression of sexual prejudice, particularly against girls Harms men in some cultural groups (by contributing to the shortage of women for men to marry) Allowed in cases where it will prevent the transmission of sex-linked genetic diseases Source: National Health and Medical Research Council IVF treatment 92 per cent for 8 per cent against Family balancing (selecting the gender of second and subsequent children) 20 per cent for 80 per cent against Gender selection (selecting the gender of any child) 17 per cent for 3 per cent undecided Source: Roy Morgan Research