If couples/women can pick the sex of their child, and allow only the ones they want to go to term, I suspect that a majority of the time they'll elect to have a boy.

Now what happens? A surfeit of male babies. Females become more valuable due to scarcity; males are surplus; their value (assuming a technological society with no heavy labor and little war) drops. Those other two Horsemen, Supply and Demand, ride again.

In one of his SF novels, the late James Blish postulated this as a scenario for the future -- men, barely existing as welfare drones; women, the elite of society. Though it seems we're heading in that direction already, with all the male-bashing that goes on in the media and society.

My point (and I'm all in favor of abortion, of not preserving undesirable traits, and of not rewarding stupid behaviors like overbreeding) is that we have to consider the economics of letting genies out of bottles before we pull the cork, not after.
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-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
Formerly:
'97 C230, smoke silver/parchment; '86 420SEL, anthracite/light grey; '84 280CE (W123), dark blue/palomino