If you are asking whether you can choose your baby's sex through IVF, here is the honest answer for anyone treated in the UK: no, unless there is a serious sex-linked medical condition in the picture. Choosing for family balancing or personal preference is not something a UK clinic can offer, and that is not clinic policy. It is the law.
We would rather tell you that on this page than let you find it out three consultations in.
Sex selection is governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, as amended in 2008. Schedule 2, paragraph 1ZB is unusually blunt for a piece of legislation:
A licence under paragraph 1 cannot authorise any practice designed to secure that any resulting child will be of one sex rather than the other.
Every licensed fertility clinic in the UK, including ours, holds its licence on those terms. Veya is licensed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). A clinic that offered sex selection for social reasons would be putting that licence at risk, and with it the treatment of every patient it looks after.
The HFEA has put it more directly still: “UK law is very clear that selecting the sex of your child for any reason other than preventing serious inherited illness is strictly prohibited.”
The Act allows sex selection in a single situation: where there is a particular risk that a woman will give birth to a child who will have or develop a gender-related serious physical or mental disability, a gender-related serious illness, or any other gender-related serious medical condition.
“Gender-related” has a specific legal meaning here. The HFEA must be satisfied that the condition either affects only one sex, or affects one sex significantly more than the other. In practice that means X-linked conditions such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy or haemophilia, where boys are affected and girls are usually carriers rather than affected.
Two things about this route are worth understanding:
This is the part that genuinely confuses people, and reasonably so.
Preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) examines a few cells taken from an embryo at the blastocyst stage, around day five. PGT-A counts chromosomes to look for abnormalities, and because sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, that count does reveal whether an embryo is male or female. The information exists.
What the law prohibits is acting on it. A UK clinic cannot select which embryo to transfer on the basis of sex, and cannot use PGT for that purpose. That is why patients having PGT-A here are not routinely told the sex of their embryos at all. Withholding it is not squeamishness. It takes the question off the table entirely.
Techniques claiming to separate X-bearing from Y-bearing sperm are marketed in some countries. Used to choose a baby's sex, they fall under the same prohibition here, so no UK clinic offers them for that purpose.
Timing methods, particular diets and the various folk approaches do not work. There is no good evidence for any of them. If a website tells you otherwise, that tells you something useful about the website.
Some clinics outside the UK do advertise sex selection for social reasons, and it would be dishonest to pretend they do not. The HFEA cannot regulate treatment that takes place abroad, but it has been explicit about UK clinics' part in it, saying it would be “extremely concerned about any HFEA licensed centre, or any individual connected to it, promoting and facilitating such treatment.”
So we will not arrange it, refer you for it, or steer you towards a particular clinic overseas. If you decide to have treatment abroad anyway, we will still look after you for anything clinical you need here, and we will be straight with you about what we can and cannot verify from a distance.
If a serious sex-linked condition runs in your family, that is a different conversation and a real pathway. Bring what you know to a first appointment: a diagnosis in a relative, any genetic testing already done, letters from a genetics service. We can tell you whether the condition is already on the HFEA's approved list, what testing would involve, what it costs, and roughly how long approval takes if an application is needed. Our prices are published in full, so you can see the testing costs before you speak to anyone.
People hope for a daughter, or a son, for reasons that are usually tender and rarely trivial: a family that feels unfinished, a child who died, a culture with its own weight on the subject. None of that is silly, and we are not going to lecture you about it.
We simply cannot do it, and we would rather say so now than take your money for an assessment that leads nowhere. If it would help to talk it through with someone who is not selling you anything, our counselling team is there for exactly that.
We can tell you where your fertility stands, explain honestly whether IVF is likely to help you, and give you a written total before you start. We can tell you when an add-on will not help you, and not charge you for it. What we cannot do is choose your baby's sex, and any clinic in this country telling you otherwise is either mistaken or not being straight with you.
Not for social or family-balancing reasons. It is permitted only where there is a particular risk of a child having or developing a serious medical condition that affects one sex, or affects one sex significantly more than the other.
No. This is not a question of price or of a clinic's willingness. A licensed UK clinic cannot lawfully do it at any price.
The test can identify it, but UK clinics do not routinely report it to patients, because the sex of an embryo cannot lawfully influence which one is transferred.
Family balancing is exactly the situation UK law does not permit. We understand why people ask, and the answer is still no.
The question does not arise here, but it is worth knowing that embryo testing does not itself improve your chance of a baby. It gives you information about the embryos you already have.
The HFEA is the UK regulator and publishes plain-English guidance for patients, including the list of conditions approved for embryo testing. You do not have to take our word for any of this.
If you want to understand where you actually stand, and what would and would not help, start with a free 15-minute consultation with a Fertility Specialist. No referral needed, and no obligation. Book a free consultation.
