This just seems so wrong. A woman has twins, but she decides she only wants one. So one of the twins has to go... This comes from a lesbian couple who used artificial insemination to conceive kids: November, 2012. Two weeks after undergoing intrauterine insemination (IUI), Amy took a home pregnancy test and it was positive. At seven weeks we went back to the fertility clinic to have our first ultrasound. The black-and-white picture on the screen was a projected image of my partner’s uterus. Joined by two nurses, the OB-GYN checked that there wasn’t a fourth fetus in my partner’s belly. He maneuvered the ultrasound wand with one hand and labeled the image with the other. I watched him manipulate the machine, looking for life as if he were playing hide-and-seek. He found three. My partner was pregnant with triplets. “Are you religious?” the doctor asked as we stared at the flat-screen television mounted to the wall. “No,” we both answered. He seemed strangely relieved. Before I could ask why he cared, he wanted to know if we knew the term selective reduction. We didn’t. He suggested we make an appointment to return and talk with him about our options. Unless religious reasons prohibited us from considering it, he wanted to provide the pros and cons of aborting one or two of the healthy fetuses. When the doctor seemed happy that faith did not prevent us from thinking about the next steps, religion was no longer a limiting factor in our lives. Our lack of religion was suddenly opening up our options as a couple. December, 2012. “All three fetuses are equally healthy, so we are going to insert the needle into the heart of fetus C,” the doctor performing the procedure told us. “It is farthest away from the cervix and eliminating it will be the least disruptive to the pregnancy.” “Do you want to see them one more time?” My partner was lying on a medical table, her stomach exposed and ready. I squeezed her hand, and we looked away from the ultrasound screen. “No,” she said. “OK. Are you ready?” the doctor asked. February, 2011. “She’s here, she’s here!” I had screamed when my daughter, my first child, finally entered the world. After nearly 24 hours of watching my partner struggle to give birth, she finally pushed our posterior, sunny-side-up baby girl into the early light of day. There was a moment I was prepared to have the doctor’s perform an emergency Cesarean section, but with one final push my daughter was born. The top of her head was black and blue from having pushed against her mother’s pelvis for hours. The doctor suggested we make an appointment to return and talk with him about our options. Unless religious reasons prohibited us from considering it, he wanted to provide the pros and cons of aborting one or two of the healthy fetuses. November, 2012. Triplets. Triplets. Triplets. As we left the hospital’s fertility wing, I said the word three times, once for each fetus. I said it to determine if hearing it would make me know what to do with the knowledge. I said it again and again to try to grasp the reality of the decisions we would have to make regarding the three lives now housed in my partner’s belly. It had taken six tries and six vials of sperm to conceive our first child in 2010. After she was born, the months ticked away and her milestones were reminders of just how lucky we were. We had a perfect little girl; it almost seemed like testing fate to ask for just one more, but at 15 months, she was no longer just our daughter but also the potential sibling to at least one other child we hoped to have. We wondered if we could do it with only the six remaining vials. We had made our peace with the possibility that we couldn’t, but we knew how blessed we would be if we could. Our second pregnancy was achieved after one doctor assisted intrauterine insemination. This time around, we were blessed times three. The obstetricians who had delivered our daughter had told us the average gestation period for triplets is 32 weeks. They explained how their low birth weight could cause complications and the long-term health problems that could ensue. They told us that a triplet pregnancy also increases health risks for the person carrying the babies. Some of those risks would be amplified for my partner because of her difficult labor and delivery the first time. Carrying a second child, just one baby, was worth worrying about; carrying three babies would likely be too much for an already weakened cervix. The doctors provided the science and our odds of having what was considered to be a successful pregnancy in terms of carrying three babies as opposed to two or one. They told us stories of patients who had faced the same choices. They told us stories of hope and faith, fear and longing. But they always provided the facts, the actuality of all predicted and desired outcomes. But how do you define success in this situation? Would success for us mean the reduction of risks via the reduction of life? Would this also reduce our prospects for love, health, and boundless potential? As a gay couple, we had worked so hard to make a family. How could we be OK with eliminating even a small part of our dream? We knew the risks of not going through with the reduction, but there was risk in going through with it, too. Would success mean we sacrificed a life to enhance the possibility of health and happiness for two others? Ultimately, we accepted the loss of one baby. October, 2015. “Let’s play Who’s Missing!” my daughter and oldest child screamed upon entering the house after a day at preschool. She kicked off her rain boots and was eager to show me and her two siblings how to play a game she had learned that day. My daughter ordered one of us to go to another room while she hid one of her siblings under a blanket. When given the cue, I or her other mama was allowed to come into the room to guess who was missing. But her toddler siblings refused to stay hidden, or the dog wouldn’t get off of the blanket, or both of her siblings would try to hide. The appeal of playing a game she’d enjoyed with 15 like-minded 4-year-old classmates was lost on our family of five. After my daughter threw a tantrum and ended the game, I thought of Fetus C. Fetus C will always be missing. We don’t know the gender, but I think C was a girl, and I can feel the weight of her missing on my lap. I can hear echoes of her laughter mixed with that of the others. I can see the tears she will never cry in the tears my living children cry in abundance. June, 2013. My partner had started to dilate at 29 weeks and our babies were born at 36 weeks. They were ready to come home three days later. We had introduced two healthy babies to their big sister, knowing the potential for three healthy babies or no babies at all had always been there. We reduced the pregnancy from three to two when my partner was 13 weeks along. The only thing that was guaranteed was an aborted baby. There was risk that the reduction would disrupt the entire pregnancy. Reducing one could mean reducing all three. Science cannot talk its way through or out of a broken heart though. Not regretting our decision doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t hurt each time I think about the injection that stopped the beating heart of Fetus C. But the loss of life doesn’t equal the loss of love. Making Peace with Selective Reduction https://longreads.com/2018/06/28/making-peace-with-selective-reduction/ I'm beginning to see why Catholics oppose artificial insemination and fertility treatments. With all this just being a matter of casual consumer choice, deciding the exact number of babies you want in a pregnancy has just become yet another in the list of choices, apparently. When fertility treatments are used it's very common for there to be more than one fetus, more than is desirable. And then the only way to "rectify" that problem is to abort one (or some) of them. How do they even decide, in these situations, which fetus to terminate? Is it just a matter of random chance? Do they flip a coin? Does the woman look at the ultrasound screen and point "That one!" ? Maybe some sex selection going on? If she decides to get rid of one of them she might decide to keep the one with a certain gender. Twins in the womb at 13 weeks, you can see them playing with each other
Look up any abortion-related item in the pro-choice site Jezebel, and you’ll see the developing human referred to as a fetus or pregnancy. But when the same entity appears in a non-abortion item, it gets an upgrade. A blood test could help “women who are concerned that they may be carrying a child with Down’s Syndrome.” A TV character wonders whether she’s “capable of carrying a child to term.” Nuclear radiation in Japan “may put unborn children at risk.” This bifurcated mindset permeates pro-choice thinking. Embryos fertilized for procreation are embryos; embryos cloned for research are “activated eggs.” A fetus you want is a baby; a fetus you don’t want is a pregnancy. Under federal law, anyone who injures or kills a “child in utero” during a violent crime gets the same punishment as if he had injured or killed “the unborn child’s mother,” but no such penalty applies to “an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman … has been obtained.” Reduction destroys this distinction. It combines, in a single pregnancy, a wanted and an unwanted fetus. In the case of identical twins, even their genomes are indistinguishable. You can’t pretend that one is precious and the other is just tissue. You’re killing the same creature to which you’re dedicating your life. Sophie’s Choice is a common theme in abortion decisions. To give your existing kids the attention and resources they’ll need, you have to terminate your fetus. This rationale fits the pro-choice calculus that born children are worth more than unborn ones. But in the case of reduction, the child for whom you’re reserving attention and resources is equally unborn. She is, and will always be, a living reminder of what you exterminated. This is what tortures pro-choicers. https://prolifeaction.org/2011/wsaletan/
The developing fetus is a fetus. And the choice is up to the mother within the limits of the law state, not anyone else.
Another dilemma, if she chooses to have one of them terminated it could end up causing the whole pregnancy to be terminated. There is that risk – a risk some women seem to be fine with taking. (And if they both die she can always try again for another pregnancy, and just keep aborting until she gets the right outcome she desires)
The law is an infantile philosophical debate tactic. Congratulation on the complete lack of ability to demonstrate a single shred of philosophical prowess. phi·los·o·phy Dictionary result for philosophy /fəˈläsəfē/ noun: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline. a particular system of philosophical thought. plural noun: philosophies "Schopenhauer’s philosophy" the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience. "the philosophy of science"
A woman I used to work with became pregnant with quads after undergoing IVF. It was recommended that she reduced the number of foetuses she was carrying by two. She refused and then miscarried all of them four weeks later. She bitterly regretted her decision, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. These days, only two embryos are used at a time in the UK to avoid such tragedies.
If she aborts one of them, she's still pregnant. Are we really talking about the woman's body, or what's inside her?
How about if the woman is pregnant with triplets, she chooses to abort one of them because that would be too many children, but the doctor decides to terminate 2 of them without her permission. Should the doctor be severely punished? Is that an assault on the woman's body?
Performing a procedure that the patient did NOT OK is a GIGANTIC issue throughout medicine. MORE IMPORTANTLY for your thread: You constantly and totally ignore the medical context of the decisions you identify. There can be real reasons that a pregnancy even of ONE fetus can present unacceptable risk to life. In this post of yours, the doctor's action could be totally justified due to life threatening complications. Even if a procedure has not been ok'd, the doctor can be expected to take certain actions as necessary to save life. If you don't want that to happen, you need to make that desire clear. And, suggesting that doctors are behaving capriciously is a strong accusation - one that is a separate issue, NOT specific to abortion. Your posts read like someone desperately trying to gin up justifications for your religious position.
Yes, but with an increasing amount of frequency these days the reductions are taking place for purely elective reasons. (i.e. "I don't want to have to have two babies, I only signed up for one!")
In the case of twins, I don't think one life outweighs the lives of two! Besides, she's not even terminating her pregnancy. It's not like she did this to get out of a pregnancy.
That's not your concern. You are entitled to your opinion, and the woman in question is entitled to tell you to mind your own business.
Cite please. Besides, why are you picking around the edges like this? If you really wanted fewer abortions, you would be willing to address the broader issue. You're trying to concoct a false reason for laws against women. I want real reasons and I don't want laws against women - for very good reasons.
Carrying twins to term is more dangerous statistically than a single baby. The day YOU can die from complications of pregnancy, let me know.
A long time ago I read a story about a state where women could only get late-term abortions for health reasons or abnormalities, supposedly. Well, one of the abortion doctors simply checked off the "fetal abnormality" box on the paper form and in the blank space next to it wrote "twins". Apparently elective late-term abortions were being allowed to go on all the time, and the "health" and "fetal abnormality" exceptions in the law were just being used as loopholes. Late-term abortion doctors were finding all sorts of creative ways to interrpret "women's health" and "abnormality", and no one was reviewing it. It had gotten to such an absurd point that they were just writing comical things on the forms, knowing no one would care or probably read it.
From one story read we find it leads to "elective late-term abortions were being allowed to go on all the time," without any proof other than a story read. The claim is not proven that "health" and "fetal abnormality" excuses were being abused. The arguments against a woman's choice are absurd. Let's see the actual facts.
FoxHastings said: ↑ DUH, what's inside her IS her body. Why didn't you address the post of mine you quoted? Whatever is inside a woman's body is hers... it's in her body. Can you address that or just prattle on about something else because you can't address it??
What you "read a long time ago" or read at any time PROVES NOTHING....that isn't proof of anything... Why don't YOU become a doctor and solve all those problems ?.....you sure like commenting on what women and doctors do and should do.... so why haven't you become a doctor to straighten out all that shenanigans???? You seem to think you know more than they do already .
On another thread I read you berate an 11 year old rape victim for having an abortion, why do you not be honest and stop with all these what ifs and hypotheticals. You are against abortion full stop, even when it is a child rape victim, stop this charade.
