The Indian government recently launched a campaign to pay families not to abort their female babies. The high cultural premium placed on male children has created a significant gender imbalance, with 927 girls born for every 1000 boys. The government hopes that placing a value—$3000, to be exact—on having female children will help shift cultural mores that view females as a liability instead of an asset.

The practice of feoticidal sex-selection is commonly associated with developing countries such as China and India, where sons have been overwhelmingly preferred for millennia. Although Western nations have prided themselves on their egalitarian attitudes toward children and frowned on outdated notions such as gender superiority, developed countries are experiencing a cultural shift whereby parents are able to select their child’s sex based purely on personal taste.

According to a recent LA Times article, modern technology is making it possible for people to predict, inexpensively and non-invasively, their babies’ sex. The tests are currently under scrutiny (and litigation, as their results lack the accuracy they purport to deliver), but the motivations driving the market are not. They should be under scrutiny. For some, knowing the gender of their babies is a mere curiosity, but others base their decision to have their baby on the outcome of the test.

This is a new, but not unexpected development in the abortion-on-demand paradigm—a bizarre conflation of capitalism and personal entitlement — whereby consumers can shop for their child’s gender, guarantee the sex of their choice through selective abortion, and then litigate if the product malfunctions. Unlike the consumer who pours steaming coffee in her lap, however, these consumers end up with a human being they didn’t want. Parents might “get over” their disappointment at their child’s gender, but the practice of selective abortion for factors such as gender, or any cosmetic or genetic considerations for that matter, takes “family planning” to a new level.

The Times article abstains from passing judgment on the morality of the over-the-counter gender kits, but a robust debate about the ethics of selective abortion, especially for such seemingly frivolous goals as guaranteeing your child’s gender, is in order.