Hundreds of British couples are travelling to specialist clinics in America to choose the gender of their child in an act of 'family balancing'.
Leading American specialist Dr. Daniel Potter, who runs a large clinic in California, revealed that the number of couples seeking treatment to engineer the gender of their foetus is rising by 20pc per year.
"Gender selection or family balancing is where we use assisted reproductive technology to help couples that have one or more children of the same gender achieve a pregnancy of a child with the opposite gender," said Dr. Potter.
"I do believe that women have the right to control their own destiny. This procedure would allow them to have a boy with their first pregnancy and make sure that the second one is a girl," he said.
Over 10 British couples are travelling to Potter's clinic each month where 80pc are choosing to engineer a female child.
In the EU, gender selection is only permitted for medical reasons.
"I view this as an issue of reproductive freedom no different to a woman's choice to stay pregnant," said Dr. Potter.
The treatment costs over $15,000 (€11,100) and requires a 12 day stay in hospital.