Family Planning - Personal Choices

Family Planning: Personal Choices

In her essay, "Freeing Choices," Nancy Mairs discusses the personal choices in family planning, which significant advances in the field of medical technology and genetics are now likely to make possible. Prior to the advent of ultrasounds and amniocentesis, it was not possible for would-be-parents to learn the sex of their unborn child. Indeed, other than practicing family planning to prevent the creation of new life, families had little choice but to accept the new born, irrespective of the sex or their hopes for a son or daughter. Today, however, it is possible to use "amniocentesis to determine the sex of a fetus, followed by abortion if the parents don't want the sort they've begun." (Mairs, p. 435) Thus, modern technology and knowledge have now made a greater degree of personal choice possible in family planning. It is this central fact...
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