Corrupting Everything It Touches.(sex preselection)

"The tests, scientists say, are the latest incarnation of old wives' tales about salty food cravings, hairy legs and belly shapes denoting the sex of the impending baby. This time, the predictions are being sold with the patina of cutting-edge genetic technology." -- From "Accuracy of gender test kits in question," Los Angeles Times, February 24.

"How does a taboo begin to die?" -- From "Abortion and your right to accurate sex selection," by William Saletan published February 25 at slate.com.

I would not have seen the Los Angeles Times story by Karen Kaplan, had I not run across the column by William Saletan. With Saletan you never know what you're going to get, but in this instance he has a very shrewd take on what Kaplan calls the "booming genomics industry" which has proven to be a haven for hucksters.

Our concern here is not with the panoply of absurd predictions various companies are making about everything from "personalized dieting plans" to "the sports for which one is best suited." It isn't even the issue of whether parents should be investigating whether their growing unborn child is a boy or a girl.

It actually even goes beyond what is done with that knowledge. Obviously, if we oppose abortion, we'd surely be steadfastly against taking a child's life because the little one is the "wrong'" sex": a boy when a girl is wanted, or (more typically) a girl when a boy is desired.

If there can be gradations to degradations, sex-selection abortions may be the worst of them all.

But Saletan's very keen observations begin with the fact that abortion is not the focus of Kaplan's story. "Termination" certainly is in the background, although the women quoted tell Kaplan they would not have aborted had they known that the child was not the "preferred" sex.