--- title: Girls Gone Wild Founder Used IVF to Have Twin Girls description: Joe Francis and partner Abbey Wilson are having twin girls with the help of IVF gender selection, a legal procedure in the U.S. that, on average, costs $18,000. "We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases," he reasoned canonical: https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-11T22:51:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:08.253Z og:title: Girls Gone Wild Founder Uses Science To Make Sure He Has Girls Not Boys og:description: Joe Francis and partner Abbey Wilson are having twin girls with the help of IVF gender selection, a legal procedure in the U.S. that, on average, costs $18,000. "We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases," he reasoned og:url: https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltef1692adf7265333/69868a5855a859d63ca8045a/153960558-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3642 og:image:height: 2049 og:image:alt: amfAR's Inspiration Gala Los Angeles - Red Carpet og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Girls Gone Wild Founder Uses Science To Make Sure He Has Girls Not Boys twitter:description: Joe Francis and partner Abbey Wilson are having twin girls with the help of IVF gender selection, a legal procedure in the U.S. that, on average, costs $18,000. "We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases," he reasoned twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltef1692adf7265333/69868a5855a859d63ca8045a/153960558-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Girls Gone Wild Founder Uses Science To Make Sure His Children Are Girls > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Apr 11, 2014 10:51 PM UTC  arrives at amfAR's Inspiration Gala at Milk Studios on October 11, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. arrives at amfAR's Inspiration Gala at Milk Studios on October 11, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. Jeff Vespa—2012 Jeff Vespa by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Apr 11, 2014 10:51 PM UTC Today in unsettling news: Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis and girlfriend Abbey Wilson are having twins, and they used IVF to make sure they’re girls. “We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases so we chose to do IVF,” Wilson, 26, [told Us Weekly](http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/joe-francis-girlfriend-abbey-wilson-pregnant-twin-girls-2014104). Francis told Us Weekly that he is looking forward to having daughters. “We chose to have girls,” he told the magazine. “I believe people will finally understand my love, respect and admiration for women. I love girls.” Francis, who founded the Girls Gone Wild franchise, which films young women, many of them teenagers, flashing their breasts, does not have a good history with women. In 2013, he was convicted of assault for taking three women home with him and forcibly trying to separate one woman from the other two, resulting in him grabbing her neck and hair and hitting her head against the floor. Los Angles Times writer Claire Hoffman, also [recounted](http://www.latimes.com/style/la-tm-gonewild32aug06,0,888719.story#axzz2ycJocErc) her disturbing time spent with Francis for a story, where he also got physical with her. Francis’ comments about his respect for girls aside, that announcement that he had used medically assisted gender selection prompted lots of questions about how that works. It is a legal procedure in the United States, although it’s illegal in some countries. And there are a few methods that are used. One older technique involves sperm sorting, in which fertility clinics try to determine which sperm are carrying a Y chromosome, and which are carrying an X chromosome by their movement patterns (those with the Y chromosome swim faster). But there’s another more precise way to do it—a method called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. This procedure was originally developed as a way to determine whether embryos had genetic disorders. PGD paired with in vitro fertilization (IVF) allows fertility doctors to determine the gender of the embryos by screening fertilized embryos for XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes, allowing parents to decide which gender embryo they want to implant in the mother. (The selection process happens after the usual IVF process which involves having eggs harvested from the mother’s body and paired with sperm in vitro.) According to [a 2012 Slate article](http://www.slate.com/articles/health%5Fand%5Fscience/medical%5Fexaminer/2012/09/sex%5Fselection%5Fin%5Fbabies%5Fthrough%5Fpgd%5Famericans%5Fare%5Fpaying%5Fto%5Fhave%5Fdaughters%5Frather%5Fthan%5Fsons%5F.html), gender selection rakes in $100 million a year, and the average cost for a procedure falls somewhere around $18,000. What happens to the extra embryos? [CNN reports](http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/extra.ivf.embryos/index.html?iref=24hours) that many families keep them frozen, indefinitely, some donate them to research, and others are discarded. Basically, for Francis and Wilson to ensure they are having girls, it took a lot of time and money. And here’s hoping that being a father of daughters will give Francis some perspective on his franchise. After all, one day his girls will be teenagers too. \[[_Us Weekly_](http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/joe-francis-girlfriend-abbey-wilson-pregnant-twin-girls-2014104)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/"},"headline":"Girls Gone Wild Founder Uses Science To Make Sure His Children Are Girls","datePublished":"2014-04-11T22:51:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:08.253Z","description":"Joe Francis and partner Abbey Wilson are having twin girls with the help of IVF gender selection, a legal procedure in the U.S. that, on average, costs $18,000. \"We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases,\" he reasoned","url":"https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/","keywords":["Living","Parenting","IVF"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltef1692adf7265333/69868a5855a859d63ca8045a/153960558-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltef1692adf7265333/69868a5855a859d63ca8045a/153960558-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"amfAR's Inspiration Gala Los Angeles - Red Carpet","caption":"amfAR's Inspiration Gala Los Angeles - Red Carpet","creditText":"Jeff Vespa—2012 Jeff Vespa","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/59991/girls-gone-wild-founder-uses-science-to-make-sure-he-has-girls-not-boys/","name":"Girls Gone Wild Founder Uses Science To Make Sure His Children Are Girls"}}]}] ```