Arab Israelis to choose their babies’ sex

Palestinian reproductive clinics in the West Bank are an attraction for would-be Arab Israeli parents looking for males, even though dangerous operations imperil both mother and child’s lives.

Yasmine and Jacki, an Israeli couple, had always wanted a son.

The choice of a child’s sex is highly regulated by Israeli legislation. As a result, the couple travelled three hours from their home in the Jerusalem suburbs to a clinic in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

Yasmine, 27, looked uncomfortably at baby photos on the wall in the Dima Center’s waiting area, momentsoes from appreciative couples who successfully conceived through the clinic’s in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) program.

Amani Marmash, the clinic’s British-trained director, estimates she has roughly 20 appointments every day, half of which are with Palestinians from the West Bank.

The other half are Palestinian citizens of Israel, like Yasmine, whose forefathers stayed in what became Israel after 1948, while others left or were forced from their homes.

According to doctors, the majority of their patients were looking for males to carry on the family name and give financial assistance.

“We’re seeking for a brother for our two kids,” Jacki, 34, explained. Both he and his wife used pseudonyms since the topic of IVF is still taboo.

Israel has the highest per capita rate of IVF in the world and provides the procedure free of charge to female citizens up to the age of 45. IVF patients are given hormones before their eggs are surgically retrieved and fertilised outside of the womb. The embryos that arise are subsequently placed in the uterus.

The procedure is carefully regulated in Israel, as it is in many other nations. In order to implant solely male embryos, Israeli women had to have four daughters.

“We are scarcely asked anything” in the occupied West Bank, adds Yasmine.

– Three to five embryos at a time –

The Dima Center touts a 99.9 percent likelihood of success in gender selection on its Facebook page, despite the fact that the total success rate of IVF conception is substantially lower.

“Choose your baby’s gender with the Dima Center and, God willing, your family will be complete with a boy and a girl,” one post says.

In the best situations, IVF has a success rate of 60 to 65 percent, according to Marmash.

To compensate, two to three “embryos are placed into the uterus,” according to Dr Salam Atabeh, who also works at the facility.

This practise goes against worldwide recommendations that only one or two embryos be implanted, with the exception of three in women over the age of 40.

According to a 2019 UN Population Fund (UNFPA) research on private clinics in the West Bank, doctors implant three to five embryos in 70% of instances, a practise that poses health hazards to both mother and child.

Yasmine opted to implant three embryos to improve her chances following an unsuccessful first round.

Yasmine stated that if the second effort also failed, she would not hesitate to try again.

The procedure can cost between 10,000 and 15,000 shekels (2,700 and 4,100 euros), which is a significant sum for many Palestinians. The hefty expense pushes people to try as many times as possible to get pregnant.

– Totally business –

Dr. Atabeh said he takes care to warn his patients about the hazards, which include ovarian hyperstimulation, early labour, multiple births, and potential complications to the kid.

According to one gynaecologist, she sees a dozen patients every month at an Israeli hospital for issues connected to IVF procedures conducted in the West Bank.

Although uncommon, ovarian hyperstimulation can result in the patient being hospitalised for breathing difficulties, nausea, or renal failure, according to the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In addition, neonates might spend weeks in critical care during a multiple birth pregnancy, which occurs when more than two embryos are transplanted.

“Some newborns are disabled for their whole lives,” she stated, citing blindness, deafness, and developmental defects in the brain.

“When women return with triplets and problems, Israel pays for it, not West Bank facilities,” she explained.

In Ramallah, Hadeel Masri, head of the Palestinian health ministry’s women’s health and gynaecology unit, said the Palestinian Authority’s failure to fund a public IVF option had left the industry fully in private hands.

“All we’re doing is exposing women to these hazards,” she explained.

According to Bassem Abu Hamad, a public health professor at Al-Quds University and a co-author of the UNFPA research, clinics implant up to five embryos because they “need greater outcomes to generate more money.”

“It’s just business,” he explained.

Courtesy: AFP

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