The American Abolition of Boys

Choosing the sex of a child created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) is banned in most countries throughout Europe. It is forbidden in Switzerland and Austria and prohibited (except for medical reasons) in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, United Kingdom, Lithuania, Russia, Portugal, Norway, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Latvia.  And although some Latin American countries like Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, and Ecuador do not have a policy on the sex selection of a “future child,” the United States is an outlier in normalizing the sex-selection and design of children.

But, then again, the United States is an outlier in monetizing and commodifying the creation of designer children on demand. Rejecting previous concerns about how sex selection could raise concerns about creating societal gender imbalances and would lead to the destruction of normal embryos of the non-desired gender, few seem concerned about discrimination against female children now that according to the most recent reports, it appears white couples in the United States prefer girls.

A recent article in Slate titled “The Parents Who Want Daughters—and Daughters Only” reveals that, for some, the option to sex select is a perk of an otherwise exacting process. For others, it is the point of doing IVF in the first place. According to Jeffrey Steinberg, the founder of the Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, “elective IVF for sex selection rakes in an estimated $500 million annually for clinics.” That’s about 5 percent of the $8 billion market. Steinberg, who markets this service aggressively, estimates “85 percent of his patients are there purely for gender selection.”

Other fertility clinics do not have such an aggressive marketing strategy on sex selection. For example, a Slate reporter interviewed Sharon Moayeri, the founder of Orange County Fertility in Newport Beach, California, who said her clinic does not prominently advertise sex selection—it’s fourth in a menu of services on the website—but she estimates up to 15 percent of patients arrive without any fertility issues.

Sex-selection of future children has been an economic boon to the fertility industry. In fact, an article published in the October 2023 issue of Fertility and Sterility, revealed “fertility now appears to be the medical specialty with the greatest market share owned by private equity investors. Some of the largest fertility practices in the country are private equity-backed … And annual profits often exceed 20-30 percent.”

The fertility industry is especially attractive to private equity firms and hedge funds for several reasons. Most importantly, it is attractive to investors because it is “less regulated” and wealthy patients and their employers—instead of the government—are the ones funding the IVF treatments. According to the article:

[G]iven a predominantly cash and commercial payor base, fertility has historically been lower-risk in terms of a reimbursement and regulatory perspective, in contrast to other specialties that depend heavily on Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement.  As a result, there is limited regulation, a high rate of self-pay for infertility treatment, and operating cycles were completed with a single IVF cycle costing on average, $12,000 to more than $30,000 per cycle depending on geographic location, medication costs and additional services.

Sex selection is one of those important—and expensive—additional service on the menu of the private equity provided services when designing a child through IVF. In fact, one study found that acquisition by private equity of a fertility chain was associated with increases in IVF clinic volume by 28.2%. Adding and marketing the expensive sex selection item to the menu of fertility services, as well as being able to offer additional choices (including being able to choose the eye color of future children), has been a boon to the private equity firms involved in the fertility industry.

Even more worrisome is an increasing number of wealthy white first-time parents are seeking out IVF treatment just so they can have a female child. The Slate reporter interviewed 15 women (and a couple of men) who are planning on doing IVF so they can have a daughter. The responses were horrifying. One of those interviewed, named “Grace,” told the reporter: “When I think about having a child that’s a boy, it’s almost a repulsion like, Oh my God, no … I don’t like kids. I don’t want kids anytime soon. Especially one that’s a boy.”

The reporter concluded Grace also thinks that if her feelings around kids change, she wants to dodge the possibility of becoming a “boy mom.” The idea of having a male child is actually repulsive to all of those who were interviewed for the Slate article. One of them, named Lexi, said she and her husband want two kids, both girls. According to the article, Lexi’s husband values traits “more associated with girls, including empathy, social skills and kindness.”

Neither 32-year-old Lexi nor her husband has fertility issues and could naturally conceive and give birth without IVF. But they simply want to control the entire process. They are not just planning IVF, they are also getting matched with a female surrogate who will carry and give birth to their first female child so they will have more time to “rave, travel, and self-actualize without worrying about a pregnancy.”

The idea of “toxic masculinity” emerged in the conversations with many of the women who spoke with the Slate reporter. These women seem to believe they are performing a social good by not bringing more men into the world. One of those interviewed said because the oldest children tend to be more successful, if everyone did sex selection we could squash inequality by manipulating birth order. A Toronto ethics professor has claimed sex selection can’t be discriminatory if some parents opt for daughters. She writes:

Allowing sex selection for purposes of family balancing in countries in which no demonstrable pro-male sex bias exists among prospective parents appears at least ethically neutral and tolerable … it avoids the harm of compelling a woman’s repeated pregnancies until her goal of a family balanced by children of both sexes is achieved and of abortion of an unplanned pregnancy that may be of a fetus of the balancing sex.

Still, the war on boys continues unabated. The Slate article concludes that “for many, the prospect of raising a girl just feels as if it will be easier. She’s far less likely to commit a mass shooting or to idolize Andrew Tate.”

In Dignitas Infiniti, Pope Francis has reiterated his strong stand against surrogacy and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (par 2377) states clearly that IVF is “morally unacceptable” because it not only separates the marriage act from procreation, it also establishes the domination of technology over human life.

The choice for female (only) children is a nightmare even the most radical feminist could not have envisioned. But in some ways, this was predicted in 1943 by C. S. Lewis in Abolition of Man. Lewis warned that while man’s power over nature is something worth pursuing, it should never be used to debunk morals, values and natural law. He worried about a future in which the morals and values of the majority would be controlled by elites—like the scientists, engineers, and the financial gurus who support the fertility industry today. Lewis understood well these elites, who recognize and exploit what he called the “unreflected whims” of the population.

And Lewis predicted a time—like today in the private equity-driven fertility industry—when the controllers would no longer be recognizably human and the controlled would be robot-like, responding to media-driven stimuli which have told them male children are no longer desirable or needed.  For Lewis, the abolition of man will have been completed. For us, the abolition is in progress.