To politically conservative and devoutly Christian people, the idea of terminating a pregnancy under any circumstances is simply unthinkable.  I respect that; having been raised Catholic, I’m happy I’ve never been in a position to need an abortion, because I think it would probably be a traumatic experience for me.  However, I’ve always believed that abortion should be legal and widely available, because just as it is one woman’s right to have 19 children (but who’s counting?), it’s another woman’s right to have none. 

But abortion isn’t just for women who don’t have or don’t want kids, and not everyone who identifies as pro-choice sees abortion as a black and white issue.  In fact, there is so much grey area, it’s hard to identify all the cloudy circumstances under which terminating a pregnancy becomes ethically questionable, a moral quandary for the people involved in the decision.  I think most people would find third trimester abortion ethically unsound – except in cases where the mother’s life is at stake.  Many pro-choice advocates could understand if a married woman who wasn’t yet ready to have kids ended an unplanned pregnancy, but what about a married woman who already has children?  Most feminists probably support or can at least sympathize with a desire to selectively reduce multiples beyond three, but what about the selective reduction of twins?  Twins who were not only conceived using fertility treatment - a process afforded by wealthy women who desperately want to be pregnant – but who are of differing genders, therefore forcing the mother to choose which fetus to keep, the girl or the boy.

That’s the story of Bettina Paige, who wrote a piece for Elle about her decision to abort the male fetus during her pregnancy with twins.  She doesn’t seem to have taken the decision lightly, saying, “I was horrified at the idea of terminating one of the fetuses growing inside me by injecting potassium chloride into his or her heart.”  (I shudder to think of it so grimly.)  Paige goes so far as to acknowledge the intense engineering going on in her reproductive life, describing selective reduction as “Orwellian,” adding, “I knew I was ending what could be a life.”

At this point, you’re probably wondering why Paige was even considering selective reduction.  Two kids really isn’t that many, she only had one other child at home, and she chose to become pregnant again using an expensive fertility treatment.  So why would she want to end what could have been a life?

Because her husband is a selfish jerk. Continue reading »

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Still shocked over OctoMom? A woman in Tunisia says she’s got twelve fetuses cooking inside her belly, and she’s keeping them ALL.

Not yet identified, the woman is apparently a teacher with a history of miscarriage. She and her husband sought fertility treatments thinking at first that they might have twins. Then came the doctor’s news – six female fetuses and six male. Continue reading »

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