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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Selecting the sex...
Message-ID: <725@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Oct-86 13:14:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.725
Posted: Tue Oct  7 13:14:17 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Oct-86 04:25:39 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!garry@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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Approved: taylor@hplabs
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This article is from garry@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Garry Wiegand)
 and was received on  Mon Oct  6 19:40:57 1986
 
In a recent article in Dave Taylor wrote;

> From a fairly reputable source last night, I heard that a product has
> just been introduced on the market that allows parents to choose the
> sex of their unborn child.
>
> There is also a big uproar about it...

We were just talking about this yesterday: my own thought was that at
first, in many societies, boy babies would be preferred. There would
be more cannon fodder to fight wars with, and more male competition and
violence in general. And that would be a Bad Thing.

But as female babies and females became less numerous in the population, 
the societies and families might discover that the numerous males were 
always throwing themselves into wars and getting killed (I'm thinking of 
Iran and Iraq), less able to procreate (by the numbers), and in general 
being not-too-useful for one's declining years and for society. Then 
female children would become, willy-nilly, more valuable and more valued. 
Things might or might not recover to equality of numbers, but at least there 
would be equality of *value*. It would be a dramatic change of thinking. 
And that would be a Good Thing.  

(The U.S., on the average, might go against the grain - purely subjective, but 
the women I know seem to hope for girl children, and the men I know do too.)

garry wiegand   		(garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu)