In a country where the preference for boy children dates back centuries, driven by religious custom, will a growing and stable middle class begin to give girls new opportunities and view boys and girls as being of equal value?

“Our main goal is not to cause any harm or additional stress to families,” says Nancy Spinner, head of genomic diagnostics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Clinics in India pay poor women a lot of money to be surrogate mothers, but "the contracts are usually written to protect the wealthy people who are commissioning the baby," says ethicist Arthur Caplan.

There is a proposal on the ballot in Mississippi that would say human life begins at conception. If the measure passes, every fertilized human egg in Mississippi would be defined as a person, and that could make abortion, for any reason, murder.

Watch excerpts from 2008 and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s June 3, 2011 speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington.

Watch excerpts from potential GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.’s June 3, 2011 speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington.

Doctors and patients make health care decisions, says Dr. Bruce Silva of the Sierra Vista Regional Health Center, "but then it has to be okay'd by someone else who puts their belief systems and their ethics on me and on my patients."

Watch a panel of reporters discuss the most significant religion and ethics news of 2009.

"Abortion is a health service, " says Rev. Debra Haffner, director of the Religious Institute. "Abortion is a morally objectionable activity," says Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life.

Watch more of Kim Lawton’s interviews with Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, and Rev. Debra Haffner, executive director of the Religious Institute.