I have a young

cousin who was about four years old when her parents discovered that they

were expecting again. She was with her visibly pregnant mother at a store

when they met another lady who struck up a conversation with the youngster.

"So,

would you rather have a little brother or a little sister?" she asked.

The girl,

with all the seriousness a four-year-old could muster, replied, "You

don't get to choose."

As you know

if you follow news from the medical community with any regularity, there

are people out there trying to change that.

A doctor in

Belgium has garnered a bit of notoriety in recent months for his claims

that he can help a couple choose the sex of their child. The University

of Ghent professor has already begun treating five women from various

European countries, according to news reports. One is pregnant, while

the other four await artificial insemination.

The meat of

the process apparently involves sorting sperm according to chromosomes,

whether they be of the X (female) or Y (male) variety. That work is reportedly

done in the United States, by a company in Virginia called MicroSort.

According

to MicroSort's Web site, the chances of success are 88 percent if the

parents want a daughter, and 73 percent if they want a son. The site also

says that 460 women have become pregnant using the treatment.

Back in Belgium,

legislators are looking at passing a law banning this practice. The doctor

said that if that happens, he will stop and abide by the law, but he feels

like it should be permitted as long as it does not harm the children,

the family or society.

Couples undergoing

the treatment must already have a number of children, as the aim is to

"balance the family," according to the doctor.

Maybe I'm

a bit narrow-minded, but this whole thing gives me the creeps. Do we really

want people to have the capability of making these kinds of decisions?

If this door

gets open an inch, it will eventually swing wide and allow everything

you can imagine. Prospective parents will be sorting through the gene

pool at will, getting rid of whatever they don't approve of. You don't

want a child with red hair and freckles? Fine. Afraid your kid might have

a tendency to be overweight? No problem. Worried you might have a son

or daughter with a low IQ? We can take care of that.

We as a society

are beginning to prove that we can't even manage birth control properly,

let alone the specifics of a child's characteristics. Birth rates in Western

countries have fallen so rapidly in the past few decades that it will

soon be impossible to reverse the trend, although Asian and African countries

are still in a population boom. Given the events of the past couple of

years, how does the idea of a Muslim majority in the United States and

Europe sound? It could happen sooner than you think.

Then you have

the masters of population control, the Chinese. Since their government's

decision some 20 years ago to limit every family to one child, a generation

of abortion on demand has resulted in a male-female ratio that is getting

dangerously out of control. About 40 million young men in China have no

prospects for marriage, because there simply are not enough women to go

around, and the women are themselves such valuable commodities that kidnapping

and slavery are real concerns in dozens of areas.

So while the

"intellectuals" try to figure out how to do things better than

God has done them the past few thousand years, here's a thought:

Take a look

at the 2000 U.S. Census figures with regard to male and female population.

The numbers are broken down by age in five-year increments (under five

years old, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, etc.), and it's uncanny how the genders

are never more than 2 or 3 percentage points apart in any age group, until

you get to age 70, where the longer-living women really warp the curve.

Think about

it. Out of hundreds of millions of Americans, and millions in every age

category, the male-female ratio is almost even. Same goes for world birth

rates. If you allow a couple of points for margin of error, it could be

even closer to 50-50, out of billions of people.

Could any reasonable

person actually think that evolution would cause this?

[Monroe Roark

can be reached at [email protected].]