It has been claimed that British women are traveling to fertility clinics in America to select the sex of their babies. Gender selection is banned in the UK under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
The astonishing revelations are published in the Telegraph who claim that 'dozens' of women are flying to the States each year to have fertilised eggs of their choosing implanted.
The women are said to be attending clinics in New York and Los Angeles.
Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, a British-trained medic, is one doctor offering a gender selection service. He said he assists around 40 British couples a year to have a baby of the sex of their choice and has in total carried out gender selection for 400 British women in the last few years.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Dr Steinberg said: "New York is only a seven or eight-hour flight from most of Europe, so it works very well for those from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the Middle East."
His website makes no secret of the services he has to offer, with a message saying: "If you want to be certain your next child will be the gender you are hoping for, no other method comes close to the reliability of PGD'. (Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis).
"While traditional sperm-screening techniques have a success rate of 60 to 70 per cent, only PGD offers virtually 100 per cent accuracy."
It goes on to state: "Unlike many programmes offering sex selection only to very limited couples with known genetic disorders in the family, we make sex selection available to all patients."
And to make it clear he welcomes patients from abroad for the procedure, the site boasts: "Parents have come to us from nearly every nation on the planet - we have assisted patients from 147 different nations - seeking to balance their families or assure themselves that a pregnancy will result in only the gender outcome they desire."
British regulations only allows gender testing to take place where there is a family history of serious genetic physical or mental medical conditions.
What do you think about this? The family's choice if they are prepared to spend all that money? Or just plain wrong, and banned in the UK for good reason?