Planning Sex Of Baby

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 15

Planning Sex Of Baby

(N, Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, April 6. It is easy for couples who want a baby to choose whether to have a boy or a girl, according to a noted gynaecologist, Dr Landrum Shettles, who says that they are able to be right about nine times out of 10.

Dr Shettles, an obstetricangynaecologist at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre in New York, says in an article in “Look” magazine that couples who conscientiously followed the harmless, easy procedures he developed were 85 per cent to 90 per cent successful in planning the sex of their babies.

Timing is the critical factor, according to the doctor. Those who want a girl should cease intercourse two or three days before ovulation. If they want a boy, they should time things to coincide with ovulation.

For a girl child, “frequent intercourse prior to the final try, two or three days before ovulation . . . may help,” he recommends. Dr Shettles’s method also prescribes some techniques and positions for intercourse, depending on whether a boy or a girl is planned. Timing is important because the androsperm (for a boy) has a life expectancy of 24 hours, and the gynosperm (for a girl) two or three days. Dr Shettles says that his procedures are safe for both mother and child. “There’s nothing distasteful about them, and nothing any religious body has objected to.” Effective methods of gender selection could aid population control as well as the elimination of sex-linked diseases such as haemophilia winch are inherited by members of one sex only, he says. Carriers of sex-linked illnesses could avoid conceiving children of the susceptible sex, and couples could achieve gender balance of their offspring by planning, rather than hoping.