Oh! You're pregnant? When are you due? Is it a boy or a girl? What do you mean, you don't know?
Well, The Journal of the American Medical Association says there's a blood test that can tell by analyzing fetal DNA in the blood without putting the baby in danger, as some procedures can. That's right—just a needle in your arm, and a little bit of blood can tell you your child's biological gender as early as seven weeks into the pregnancy.
Chelsea Wallace had the test done and says it made her life so much easier. She found out she was having a son, and then had the test results confirmed by an ultrasound which enabled her to begin preparing for the baby much earlier than most.
“As soon as I found out I was pregnant,” said Wallace, whose son is due in September, “I wanted to know what I was having.”
While some women are finding this procedure a godsend, others have had to deal with false results.
The test is coming under fire from critics. People are worried that these tests will be used for gender selective abortions.
“We don’t want this technology to be used as a method of gender selection,” said Terry Carmichael, executive vice president of Consumer Genetics, which sells a test called Pink or Blue.