Yes — with IVF you can choose the sex of the embryo that is transferred, and the identification itself is close to certain. The sex chromosomes are read from an embryo biopsy during preimplantation genetic testing, and a correctly performed test is right essentially every time. What is not certain is that you will have a healthy embryo of the sex you want. That is the real question, and it is decided by how many embryos you make, not by the test.
Almost everything written about this subject is written by someone selling the treatment. That is why the same two sentences keep reappearing: “99.9% accurate” and “choose your baby's gender.” Both are technically true and together they are misleading, because they describe the laboratory step and skip the part that actually fails.
This site separates the two. The pages below are organised around the decisions you have to make, in the order you have to make them.
Start here
Can you choose the gender with IVF?
The direct answer, the part the accuracy claim hides, and what it means if you only make two embryos.
How it works, step by step
Stimulation, day-5 biopsy, freezing, the lab report you should ask to see, and the frozen transfer.
What it costs
Where the money actually goes, why two quotes for the same thing differ by a factor of four, and the line items that get left out.
Success rates
Two different numbers get called the success rate. One is near 100%. The other is the one that decides whether you go home with the child you planned.
Gender selection without IVF
Sperm sorting, the Ericsson method, timing methods, home kits. What each one can and cannot do, and which are simply chance.
Where it is legal
Country by country, with the actual statute or regulation for each — and an honest mark showing which rows we verified against primary sources.
By country
Gender selection USA
No federal prohibition, the highest prices in the world, and policies that differ between clinics in the same city.
Gender selection UK
Prohibited under the HFE Act. What British patients do instead, and where the measured demand actually goes.
IVF Cyprus
Two jurisdictions, two different laws — and the one that advertises sex selection is the one we could not document.
Gender selection Canada
The strictest provision anywhere: identifying an embryo's sex is itself a criminal offence.
Gender selection Australia
Prohibited through NHMRC guidelines and state law — and its own regulator does not treat the question as settled.
Methods and specifics
MicroSort
The best-known sperm-sorting programme. What happened to its US trial, and where its accuracy figures come from.
IUI gender selection
Sold as the affordable route. The arithmetic, worked through, before you pay for the first cycle.
Can embryo grade tell you the gender?
4AA, 5AB, 3BB — what the grade means, and where the belief that top embryos are male came from.
Family balancing
Selecting the sex you do not already have. Who qualifies, and why permissive clinics still draw a line here.
The Ericsson method
Cheap, decades old, still offered — and the evidence does not support the figures quoted for it.
Sex selection
The whole picture: methods, the medical/non-medical line every law turns on, and the arguments on both sides.
The three things most people get wrong
- “The test is 99.9% accurate, so this is a 99.9% chance of a girl.”
It is not the same sentence. The test tells you the sex of an embryo you already have. It cannot create an embryo of the sex you want. If every embryo you produce is male, a perfect test returns a perfect answer and you still do not have a daughter from that cycle.
- “IVF is the expensive part, the selection is a small add-on.”
Arithmetically true for a single cycle, and misleading over a course of treatment. Selecting sex discards healthy embryos of the other sex, so it raises the number of cycles some patients need. The cost of sex selection is not the testing fee; it is the extra cycles it can cause. See cost.
- “My clinic can tell the sex from the embryo grade.”
No clinic can. A grade such as 4AA or 5AB describes how the embryo looks under a microscope — expansion, inner cell mass, outer layer. It carries no information about chromosomes. Only a genetic test reads sex, and the belief that top-grade embryos skew male has not held up.
Where it is lawful, in one paragraph
Sex selection for non-medical reasons is prohibited in most high-income countries that regulate fertility treatment, and permitted in a small number of others. The United Kingdom prohibits it under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, Canada makes it a criminal offence under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, and Australian practice is bound by the NHMRC's ART guidelines. The United States has no federal prohibition, which is why it is the main destination inside the English-speaking world and also the most expensive one. Several other jurisdictions permit it and compete on price. A country-by-country page with the specific legal instrument for each is in preparation; we would rather publish it late than publish it wrong.
If you are reading this from India: sex selection and prenatal sex determination are criminal offences there under the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, and the Act also prohibits advertising such services. Nothing on this site is offered to you.
How we write this
We are not a clinic and we do not publish a price as our own. If we introduce you to a clinic and you go ahead with treatment, we may be paid a referral fee — stated here rather than buried in a footnote, because you should weigh it. It does not change which questions we tell you to ask. Where a number appears it is attributed to whoever published it, with a link. Where the evidence is weak — and in sperm sorting it is very weak — we say so rather than round it up. Our editorial standards page sets out the rules we hold ourselves to, including what we will not write.
Thinking about treatment abroad?
Tell us where you are, your age, and whether you have been through IVF before. We will come back with the questions worth asking and what the realistic range looks like for your situation — not a sales call.
Ask a questionCan you choose the gender of your baby with IVF?
Yes. During IVF, preimplantation genetic testing reads the sex chromosomes of each embryo, and you decide which embryo is transferred. The identification is highly reliable; what is uncertain is whether you will produce a healthy embryo of the sex you want.
How accurate is gender selection with IVF?
Identifying the sex of a tested embryo is correct in essentially every case when the biopsy and the laboratory work are done properly. Errors are rare and come from the sample, not from the method. This accuracy is about the test, not about your chance of a child of that sex.
Is IVF gender selection legal?
It depends entirely on the country. It is prohibited for non-medical reasons in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India and most of the European Union, and is not prohibited at federal level in the United States. Several other jurisdictions permit it.
Can you select gender without IVF?
Not reliably. Sperm-sorting techniques shift the odds at best and the published evidence is thin; timing methods, diets and home kits perform no better than chance. Only testing an embryo gives a definite answer, and that requires IVF.