Analyzing the Modern Sex Selection with the Perspective of the Prohibition of Infanticide

Abstract

The emergence of modern biomedically assisted sex selection for non-medical reasons facilitates parents to desire the sex of a fetus. This practice raises many ethical questions that centers around human value and dignity. The notion and practice of infanticide is categorically prohibited in Islam. Whether the non-medical gender selection practice is a form of pre-Islamic paganistic (jāhiliyyah) infanticide and whether the reasons that persuade the parents to opt such practice resemble the causes that used to motivate the jāhily Arabs is the aim of this research . The research analyses the status of surplus embryos produced through the sex-selection process in order to mark the beginning of human life and consequently to determine whether fetuses not used, i.e. terminated in sex selection process are infanticide. Some scholars and physicians opine that the surplus embryos in the process of sex selection, have life, thus killing them is as similar as killing life, i.e. a similarity to pre-Islamic infanticide in essence and in the factors.



Author Information
Hamim Azad, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar

Paper Information
Conference: ACERP2019
Stream: Ethics - Medical Ethics

This paper is part of the ACERP2019 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon