Parents should be allowed to choose the sex of their baby "to ensure they get a pink one rather than a blue one", a leading Midland fertility expert has claimed.
Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services, called for an end to restrictions banning clinics from guaranteeing a boy or a girl, when she gave evidence to a Commons inquiry.
Parents would only try to choose the sex of their baby on rare occasions and it would reduce unnecessary abortions, she added.
Midland Fertility Services, based in Aldridge, Walsall, is the region's longest established independent fertility clinic.
It treats NHS and private patients and more than 3,500 babies have been born as a result of treatment at its Aldridge and Wolverhampton clinics.
Dr Lockwood was speaking to MPs and peers as they examined the Government's Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which will create a new regulatory body to oversee the medical use of human tissues and embryos.
The Bill bans clinics from offering parents a child of a particular sex for any non-medical reason.
For example, it prevents parents who already have three boys from saying they want a girl.
Dr Lockwood told the inquiry: "I think certainly the demand for sex selection will be absolutely tiny, and I think that the circumstances in which it may be considered would be viewed often so sympathetically that I do not think this would be a slippery slope down to which a group of husbands and wives who wanted either a football team or a girls' choir would rush."
She doubted many potential parents would want to go through the necessary treatment, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
"I think any couple who were so determined to have one gender rather than another that they were prepared to put themselves through the miserable, uncomfortable, expensive and chancy in terms of success business of having IVF with ICSI and PGD to ensure they get a pink one rather than a blue one - good luck to them.
"The alternative is much worse and that is what we are seeing, that couples who go ahead, get pregnant the boring, old-fashioned way, have a scan which determines the gender and have a termination of pregnancy."
In these circumstances, it was better to let parents decide before an embryo was implanted, she said.
"I would rather that we pushed the moral step back to pre-implantation."
Dr Lockwood gave evidence to a joint committee of the Commons and House of Lords examining the legislation, at a hearing in Westminster last month.
The transcript of her evidence has only just been released. Last night she told The Birmingham Post she was not comfortable with the concept of designer babies and assisted conception units brought "into disrepute by turning them into commodities".
She said she was not advocating a "mix and match" mentality that some couples might have towards building a perfect family, but there were situations where sex selection for social reasons should be considered.
The Bill explicitly bans parents from choosing the sex of their child, except in strict medical circumstances.
Male or female chromosomes will only be screened out where inherited diseases, such as haemophilia or muscular dystrophy, are more likely to be passed on to one gender.
Last year, then Health Minister Caroline Flint warned that choosing a baby's sex was a "slippery slope to people deciding one gender is more important than the other".
A Department of Health consultation found the public was opposed to sex selection for "family balancing", amid fears of so-called "designer babies".
Some fertility experts last night backed Dr Lockwood but the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said it could not allow sex selection for social reasons.
And the British Medical Association said parents should not be allowed to choose the gender of their child.
A spokesman said: "The BMA is opposed to sex selection for social reasons.
"This is because the BMA believes this technology should be used to reduce suffering, not to satisfy parents' desire for certain characteristics in their healthy children."
