TV Personality Chrissy Teigen Gushes Over Choosing Gender of IVF Baby

You are not signed in as a Premium user; you are viewing the free version of this program. Premium users have access to full-length programs with limited commercials and receive a 10% discount in the store! Sign up for only one day for the low cost of $1.99. Click the button below.

See All Plans

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - People magazine is reporting that TV personality Chrissy Teigen and her husband, musician John Legend, are having their first child — a daughter — conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

"Not only am I having a girl, but I picked the girl from her little embryo,"Teigan said. "I picked her and was like, 'Let's put in the girl.'"

Speaking of her husband, she says, "I think he deserves a little girl. I think he deserves that bond. A boy will come along. We'll get there too, so it's not like we really have to pick."

IVF is the process of combining an egg and sperm cell in a laboratory dish and the resulting embryo is implanted in a uterus.

Two different processes can be used to determine or select the sex of the baby. The first is when "male" or "female" sperm is chosen to fertilize the egg, and the other depends on genetic testing after fertilization. The same process, known as PGD, is used to determine if the embryo has any genetic disorders.

During the process several eggs are fertilized, and after genetic testing the parents choose which one they want. The embryos can be frozen, or as is often the case, the other embryos are destroyed or used for experimentation.

Teigen confirmed on her Twitter account other embryos existed but didn't mention their fate. "[W]e didn't create a little girl. we had multiple embryos. girls and boys. we simply chose to put in a female first (and second) ..." (sic).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in the 1987 document "Donum Vitae" that IVF is immoral. It alienates the conception of a child from the marital act between a husband and wife — an act of love — and is instead left up to doctors and laboratory technicians, with the parents only providing the "raw materials." Often, "donor" materials are used, like an egg from another woman or sperm from a man other than the husband. Also, sperm is often harvested from a man by masturbation, which is a mortal sin.

Sex selection and testing for genetic disorders are fairly new, but they aren't the only things being done in the world of IVF. Three-parent embryos have been done experimentally since the mid-1990s and is still done today, but the FDA hasn't approved the procedure, maintaining it requires more testing.

Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.

We rely on you to support our news reporting. Please donate today.