Tung, a deputy director of a State-owned company in Quang Ninh province, has spent nearly VND1 billion ($50,000) for IVF service (selecting sex for the baby) in Thailand in order to surely have a son in the second birth.
This man, who is less than 40 years old, said his friends in Hanoi, all are officials, had told him about this service. “I must have a son. Both I and my wife are Party members so we cannot have over two children. I’m willing to pay at any cost to have a son,” Tung said.
He boasted that his wife is twin pregnant now after the trip to Thailand over half of a year ago.
“It was quite hard. We had to fly between Vietnam and Thailand several times, in around three months. We spent a total of VND1 billion. Doctors said that we are lucky to immediately have a male twin,” Tung said.
Not only going to see local doctors to make egg scans and following instructions from books or online materials, many wealthy couples go abroad to carry out IVF and select sex for their babies. Some couples even use ‘hired mothers.’
Thuc, a successful businessman in Hanoi, has two daughters, one is a university student and one is a high-school girl. However, the 50-year-old director still wished to have a son to inherit his career.
Hearing of the overseas service to select sex for babies, Thuc discussed with his wife and the couple was determined to have a son by this method.
As Thuc’s wife is over 40 years old and she suffered from a hysterectomy several years ago, the couple decided to hire a woman to bear their child.
After two years, with a mount of money spent, they had a son. Once again, they experienced a lot of difficulties to bring the child from Thailand to Vietnam.
At a recent international workshop in Hanoi, an official from the General Department of Population said that in Vietnam, sex imbalance at birth is more serious for three groups of the population who have medium income, the rich and the richest people.
According to statistics, the sex balance at birth of the group of needy people is normal, with 105.2 boys per 100 girls. The imbalance widens for richer people, reaching 112.9/100 for the richest group. In the third birth, the rate of male babies is up to 132.9/100.
Experts said that wealthy people have favorable conditions to approach modern techniques to choose sex for babies.
To meet this demand of Vietnamese, some foreign hospitals have their representatives in big cities in Vietnam to advertise at-demand baby selection services, which are cost around $20,000/time.
Nguyen Dinh Bach, vice chief inspector of the General Department of Population, said that the authorities know about this service but they cannot stop it.
“These people go abroad with legitimate purposes like traveling, visiting their relatives, etc. so we cannot ban them. This is also associated with the law of host countries,” he said.
Dr. Quan Hoang Lam, director of the Embryo Center of the Army Medical Institute, said that local hospitals can perform the IVF and at-birth sex selection services but they do not offer the services because it is illegal.
An expert from the Center for Genetics Research of the HCM City National University said that many people had asked him and his colleagues to help them have sons but they always refused.
He said that no country in the world allows at-birth sex selection, so the service supplied for Vietnamese couples at foreign hospitals is illegal. These are mainly small medical centers. The expert also said that the successful level of this method is not high.
Mai Chi
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