Start Painting the Nursery: At Home Gender Tests
Who needs sonograms and that big needle stuck in your belly? A new at-home pregnancy test won’t tell you whether you’ve got a bun in there but who that bun is.
According the package, the new IntelliGender Gender Prediction Test will tell you at ten weeks if you’ll be bringing home a Susie or a Steve. So why are pro-lifers all up in arms about this one?
I was set to write about how silly I thought the test sounded . . . yet another goofy way to bilk parents-to-be out of $29.99 on something that just “has to” work. Then I read over at Jezebel (which pegged the cost at $34.95, by the by) that folks are using this to sound the alarms that the rates of gender-specific abortions are going to skyrocket.
The concern, of course, is that the tests are purported to work at ten weeks, paving the way for the first-trimester abortions which are easier to access, generally accepted as safer, and, FOR SOME PEOPLE, easier to stomach. In theory, it makes sense. But in practice, it’s a load of baloney.
I’m not discounting gender-centric abortions exist, but come on people - you’d put that much faith in a pee-on-a-stick kit from the local drug store?
You’re talking about the same women who run out and buy five different pregnancy tests and pee on all of them before they trust that they are, indeed, pregnant. Then we visit our midwife or OB/GYN and submit to blood testing. THEN we want to hear the heartbeat.
And even the folks at Intelligender give it only an eighty-two percent accuracy rate in at-home testing (ninety percent in a lab setting). With those kinds of numbers, I wouldn’t be painting the nursery myself, but maybe I’m just a cynic.
It might be fun for kicks and giggles (because what other fun do you get to have while preggers?), but would you trust this thing?
Image: Intelligender
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Tags: abortion, gender, gender selection, Jeanne Sager, pregnancy, pregnancy test, pregnant, pro-choice, pro-life, sex
9 Comments
[...] Duffy is one of a group of women suing the Baby Gender Mentor for providing them with incorrect results in a test the company claims to be ninety-nine point nine percent accurate or your money back! With samples sent in to a lab for testing, moms say they felt there was less room for error. The test is supposed to assess at just five weeks the gender of the fetus, which is way before any of the medical tests in a doctor’s office - and more than a month earlier than the new home test that just hit the market. [...]
Moms Suing Gender Predictor for Wrong Gender | Strollerderby commented on Jun 17 09 at 9:32 amelohveeee1012 commented on Jun 10 09 at 10:25 ami dont know how much i would trust it, but i think i would like to try it. it would just be for fun, though that price is not fun so maybe i wont go searching for one.
Shannon LC Cate commented on Jun 10 09 at 11:26 amMy guess is that it might lead to earlier gender-selective abortions, but not more of them. If people are going to terminate based on gender, they will do it whether it’s at ten weeks or fourteen. And though I disagree with sex-selective termination, I’d just as soon those people who are going to do it whether I like it or not do it earlier, with less complication for the mother.
ChiLaura commented on Jun 10 09 at 3:54 pmI saw an ad for these tests. I totally want to try one to see if it’s accurate, but I won’t spend the $30+ to do it. There’s only an 8% difference, though, between the test and the lab? Those are pretty good numbers, assuming that they’re true. It does seem, though, that you’d have to be pretty committed to a sex-specific (btw, SEX-specific, not GENDER! When will people learn?) abortion, though, and have a pretty casual attitude towards aborting to rely on an at-home test. It would be interesting to track.
Manjari commented on Jun 10 09 at 11:18 pmI don’t really understand the point of this. Your OB can tell you during an ultrasound you’re going to have anyway.
Marj commented on Jun 15 09 at 3:21 amI have heard that some people are using these to gender select (i.e. abort girls). IMO people who abort based on gender probably would take the “word” of a OTC test. Besides, I didn’t find out the gender of my twins until 18 weeks. More difficult to abort at that stage. And no, I’m not a pro-lifer.
Shannon commented on Jun 15 09 at 4:23 pmI hope no one is using this to perform gender-specific abortions, because the results are worth about as much as the pee you put in the little cup. I had a very plain girl result (true orange) and started picking names like Emeline and Vanessa, and fantasizing about little pink dresses with ribbons. 2 weeks later at my 18 week ultrasound, my husband and I saw VERY clearly that I am having a boy. I would not recommend this test to anyone.
Smriti commented on Jun 20 09 at 8:17 amYou bet this would see gender based abortion spiralling. In India its illegal to tell the gender of the baby during an ultrasound because girl babies are aborted freely and frantically.
MMCMomma commented on Nov 16 09 at 11:46 amI saw these when I was purchasing the pregnancy tests to confirm my last pregnancy (which ended on 11/11.) After it was indeed confirmed that I was pregnant, I couldn’t help buy pick one up. At six weeks from LMP (4 weeks gestational age by ultrasound/hadlock measurements,) I got a very very definite “boy” result. Ultrasound confirmed the gender to indeed be a boy at 24 weeks, and he definitely has all his boy bits, as evidenced by the fact that I got a lovely pee-shower this morning when the cold wipes hit his poor little scrotum. ;P So yeah, I’d say they work. I’m definitely sold, anyway.
