Date: Sunday March 22nd 2015
Participants (from 8 countries):
Argentina: Johny | USA: Rick | China: Tata, Qiuqiu, Alina, Miranda, Angie | Brazil: Michel | Spain: Fernando | India : Kadirvelu | Hong Kong: Selly | Canary Islands, Spain: Pedro
Team A: Johny, Rick, Tata
Team B: Qiuqiu, Alina, Miranda, Angie, Michel, Fernando, Kadirvelu
Team C: Pedro, Selly
This was a very passionate debate, and it is a topic that to some people can be very sensitive.. The high level points of Team B:
The people that cannot accept the gender, should not be parents. They should love the child regardless of the gender.
The world would be very chaotic if people were allowed to choose the gender of their child. One of the members talked about a personal experience where she overheard her grandparents talking about how proud they were to have boys, but not girls.
Team A provided some high level points as well:
In some cases where there is a higher probability of medical problems because of a gender based disease, the ability to choose the gender of the child prevents increased hardship to the family and the child.
If people could manipulate the gender of the child it could help in areas that suffer overpopulation, due to the artificial ability to control the population through gender selection.
The last major point is that the ability to choose the gender of your child, could prevent issues such as gendercide, infanticide etc. by allowing the parent to choose.
Closing Summary: This was a very emotional debate, as too be expected on a topic such as this, particularly where in some countries, there are ongoing problems with infanticide and gendercide. It is important to remember that the people voting yes on this subject, were not advocating that they would choose the gender of their child, their point was the right to do so.
Pedro, who was on Team C, and therefore was responsible for listening to both sides, and making a decision on which side best presented their case, struggled with choosing a side. He did comment that if the procedure could be done safely, without potential harm to the parent or the child, then he thought there were some merits to it.
Below is the link to listen to our chat
Should people have to right to choose the gender of their child - Voice chat Recording File
For people who did not join the live discussion, feel free to contribute the ideas in comment blanks below.