The British Are Coming

U.K. law prohibits selecting the sex of your child unless serious medical issues are involved and this has Brits flocking to the U.S. to balance out their families. “So British couples wanting to choose the sex of their child must now go abroad, and the most common choice is the US, where sex selection is legal in every state. There is no way of knowing how many women go – people tend to keep quiet about it. But Steinberg’s clinic treats 25 to 30 British patients a year, while Rainsbury sees 70 to 80 women. And the famous Genetics & IVF Institute (GIVF), in Virginia, also has a steady contingent of British patients. There are other clinics, too, so the overall figure is probably in the low hundreds. Steinberg, a bullish, charismatic showman, has been offering PGD for 14 years, but over the last two, he says, ‘the business has just gone wild”. The great majority of his sex selection cases are couples coming for “family balancing’. It is rare, he says, for people to sex select when they have no children already. He says he treats these cases with some caution and recommends counselling.”