Is it unethical to educate myself?

[gogopogo]

Hi all, I would appreciate input from an ethical point of view, because I am clearly too biased on the matter to reason this through.

 

Here's the thing: My wife and I are pregnant:D , and we will soon be going for ultrasound appointments (post-16 weeks). We are not permitted to know the sex of our child, only potential signs of increased risk from her ultrasound. I have been toying with the idea of getting ultrasound textbooks and teaching myself to identify sex of the fetus (both my wife and myself agree that we would prefer to know the sex before-hand). However, I gotta wonder, is this wrong to do? As far as I understand it, it is not that I don't have the right to know, but instead that the staff do not have the right to tell me:confused: . If I have the right to learn what I want, do others agree or disagree that this applies?

I seem to really flip flop on this issue and would like some other input.

 

Thanks in advance

[Sheena815]

I would say go for it! I just can't ever see educating yourself about something as unethical. Education is a great thing. If that education allows you to read your baby's sex on the ultrasound, that's great. I'm sure the policy is just that the staff are not allowed to say, even though they probably know how to read it themselves. There's nothing banning any patient from going out and buying medical textbooks and educating themselves on all things medially-related because they want that knowledge for themselves. They can't actually use that information for anything involving diagnosing other people of course, but its great if people want to learn this stuff out of personal interest, I think. The medical profession doesn't have exclusive rights to the scientific knowledge behind medicine.

 

Congratulations!

[Satsuma]

Hi all, I would appreciate input from an ethical point of view, because I am clearly too biased on the matter to reason this through.

 

Here's the thing: My wife and I are pregnant:D , and we will soon be going for ultrasound appointments (post-16 weeks). We are not permitted to know the sex of our child, only potential signs of increased risk from her ultrasound. I have been toying with the idea of getting ultrasound textbooks and teaching myself to identify sex of the fetus (both my wife and myself agree that we would prefer to know the sex before-hand). However, I gotta wonder, is this wrong to do? As far as I understand it, it is not that I don't have the right to know, but instead that the staff do not have the right to tell me:confused: . If I have the right to learn what I want, do others agree or disagree that this applies?

I seem to really flip flop on this issue and would like some other input.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Could you please elaborate on why you are not "permitted" to know the gender of your baby-to-be? If you are having your ultrasound in Canada, you can know the sex of your child! No need to go out studying radiology texts!

[Guest begaster]

This is in no way an ethical issue. Do whatever you please, you're not harming anyone. You are also not forbidden to know the sex of your baby, some places just won't tell you.

[Wolvenstar]

I love how we need to empasize such such a low percentage of error, lol. Otherwise I generally agree with what everyone else has said. Most of my relatives had the gender checked when going for an ultrasound, but never believed that it was factual off the ultrasound, just that it was most likely.

[coastalslacker]

Good luck but you're wasting your time. Ultrasound techs have alot of training to do what they do and also alot of experience. You won't learn that from a textbook in a couple weeks. Plus, if it is the policy of the place the US is being done not to reveal the sex, they aren't exactly going to linger over the nether regions when you ask them to go back.....

 

Congrats on the baby though. My wife and I had our US for anatomy last week (@21wks) and it's pretty cool. I'd seen a few on my OB/GYN rotation, but it's amazing when it's yours. I tried to figure out the sex (they would have told us, but my wife wants it to be a surprise) but there's no way I would venture even a wild guess.