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Assisted Sex Selection

Proven Ways to Choose Your Baby's Gender

By Virginia Gilbert

Besides the financial burden (each procedure costs between $1,000 to $1,500) and the devastation of weathering two pregnancy losses, Anne felt the stress of "waiting to ovulate, hoping blood counts and ultrasounds would show the best time to have the IUI (insemination) that would lead to conception." In the end, she persisted out of pure belief. "I have always had a strong sense that my daughter was there waiting to be born," she says.

Carol Fullam, 36, is expecting her second child, a girl, in May. Carol's first child is a boy and she knew she and her husband would probably only have two. To raise the odds of getting their daughter, the couple went to the Huntington Reproductive Clinic in Fullerton, Calif., where Carol was inseminated with her husband's separated sperm. In all, she spent $1,100.

Carol firmly believes that reproductive technology empowers women. "This is my attitude: If God did not want me to do this, then He would not have created the technology," she says.

A pioneer in the gender determination field, 65-year-old Dr. Ronald Ericsson, developed and patented the Ericsson Albumin Method of sex selection. The current success rate is 78 to 85 percent for boys and 73 to 75 percent for girls. Costs range from $600 to $1,200 per try. To date, 2,300 children have been born with Ericsson's method, which he has offered through his company, Gametrics Limited, since 1975. The technology is available at licensed centers throughout the United States and in many countries abroad. Information about the Ericsson Method is available at www.childselect.com.

The method works by layering separated sperm over human serum albumin (the main protein in blood) several times. These sperm swim downward, where they are collected and washed. During this process, most of the sperm are eliminated; the remaining sperm, according to Ericsson, "are of the highest fertility and quality." At ovulation, a woman is artificially inseminated with the isolated sperm. To boost her "girl" odds by 25 percent, she may also take the fertility drug Clomid.

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