Start Painting The Nursery: At Home Gender Tests

Who needs ultrasounds and that big needle stuck in your belly? A new at-home pregnancy test won’t tell you whether you’ve got a bun in there but who that bun is.

According the package, the new IntelliGender Gender Prediction Test will tell you at ten weeks if you’ll be bringing home a Susie or a Steve. So why are pro-lifers all up in arms about this one?

I was set to write about how silly I thought the test sounded.. yet another goofy way to bilk parents-to-be out of money ($AU78.95) on something that just “has to” work. Then I read over at Jezebel that folks are using this to sound the alarms that the rates of gender-specific abortions are going to skyrocket.

The concern, of course, is that the tests are purported to work at ten weeks, paving the way for the first-trimester abortions which are easier to access, generally accepted as safer, and, FOR SOME PEOPLE, easier to stomach. In theory, it makes sense. But in practice, it’s a load of rubbish.

I’m not discounting gender-centric abortions exist, but come on people – you’d put that much faith in a pee-on-a-stick kit from the local chemist?

You’re talking about the same women who run out and buy five different pregnancy tests and pee on all of them before they trust that they are, indeed, pregnant. Then we visit our midwife or OB/GYN and submit to blood testing. THEN we want to hear the heartbeat.

And even the folks at Intelligender give it only an eighty-two percent accuracy rate in at-home testing (ninety percent in a lab setting). With those kinds of numbers, I wouldn’t be painting the nursery myself, but maybe I’m just a cynic.

It might be fun for kicks and giggles (because what other fun do you get to have while preggers?), but would you trust this thing?

Image: Intelligender