Editorial: Flowers or fire trucks?

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

Parents-to-be who have their hearts set on the gender of their new arrival no longer have to wait for an ultrasound four months into a pregnancy to get an answer that they may, or may not, want to hear.

An increasing number of companies claim they can determine the gender sooner - as early as five weeks after conception - by testing a pregnant woman's blood or urine. It's a promise that commonly lures people who already have children and are particularly hopeful that the next one will be the girl who rounds out a family of boys, or vice versa.

Of course, parents already have the opportunity to discover the gender of their unborn child during an ultrasound, generally done around 16 weeks. But that test is ordered by a physician primarily to check on the health of mother and baby, not for determining the child's gender. Some parents don't want to know the gender and ask that those results remain a secret.

In news reports over the past two years, medical ethicists have said that they are concerned about the efficacy of the early gender tests popping up on the market, because a fair number of the results are wrong.

But a larger and more disconcerting issue is what parents do with the information and what it does to them. A mother who already had a son and had her heart set on having a daughter told USA Today in a story on Monday that it was "really stressful" when an early gender test showed she was having another son.

How sad.

One medical policy analyst told USA Today that she fears some people would use the early tests to selectively terminate pregnancies. Some cultures already practice similarly repulsive practices.

Parents who simply must know whether a baby's room is to be painted pink or blue can find out with a medically proven test performed under a doctor's care. Beyond that, a balanced family is one in which all children are wanted and loved.