Rights Act invoked to pick baby's sex
October 13, 2000 (date accessed: Oct. 13, 2000)
By Auslan Cramb
Nash baby offers hope to Britons
Couple asked London hospital to select embryo
The tests in full and how they worked for the Nash
family
A COUPLE whose daughter died in a bonfire accident plan
to use human rights legislation introduced in Britain last week
in their fight to choose the sex of their baby.
Alan and Louise Masterton, who have four sons, say the
"female dimension" has been missing from their family since
the death of Nicole last year.
The three-year-old suffered burns to 90 per cent of her body
after a balloon filled with helium fell on a bonfire in the
family's garden. She underwent 100 hours of surgery, but
died 61 days after the accident.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has
advised Mr and Mrs Masterton, both 42, that the sex of their
baby cannot be chosen for "social" reasons, but only if there
is a pressing medical need. They plan to contest the policy in
court under the European Convention on Human Rights,
which was incorporated into British law on Monday.
Mr Masterton, who recently completed a law degree, said
they were not seeking a "designer baby" but had sound,
psychological reasons for wanting a daughter. He said: "Our
family will be imbalanced for eternity because we lost a very
special and precious member of our family. We can never
replace Nicole, but what we're hoping to do with the use of
technology is create the female dimension again."
Mrs Masterton, who was sterilised after Nicole's birth, said:
"We tried for 15 years to have a girl before Nicole was born,
and we have psychologists' reports and GPs' reports which
confirm that our reasons for wanting a girl go beyond just
wanting to replace her.
"We had five children and we had the family complete, but it
doesn't feel complete any more because we don't have our
wee girl. I adore our sons but we would like another girl."
She said that her children, Barry, 16, Adam, 13, Ross, 12 and
Scott, nine, would "love another sister".
The couple want doctors to use pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis as part of the standard in-vitro fertilisation
treatment. This would involve the destruction of male
embryos in a procedure normally employed by families with
a history of hereditary diseases, such as haemophilia or
muscular dystrophy, in male children.
The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland condemned the
family's attempt at sex selection, saying a child was "not a
product, but a gift from God". The HFEA, a government
agency, has described the case as "tragic", but has told the
family it can consider an application for implantation only
from one of Britain's five fertility clinics, which have all
refused to help.
Kevin Male, of the pro-life charity Life, said that what the
family was proposing was "simple eugenics" and he could
think of no circumstances in which sex selection was
justified. He said: "We are totally opposed to engineering the
numbers and genders of people in society. That road leads
only to disaster."
But Bishop Richard Holloway, the head of the Scottish
Episcopal Church and a former member of the HFEA board,
has urged the authority to consider relaxing the policy. He
said: "While you could probably make a case for a general
regulation that sex selection is a bad thing, there must be
exceptional circumstances. I would think this one probably
was."
The Mastertons are consulting lawyers, and if they win a
judicial review of the national policy it will be based on article
six of the convention, which guarantees a "fair hearing" from
public authorities, and article eight, which enshrines an
individual's right to "respect for family life".
Prof Ken Mason, who teaches medical law and ethics at
Edinburgh University, said the Mastertons' aims crossed the
boundaries of ethically acceptable medical practice.