I was chatting with a physician today about the recent septuplets in B.C. She mentioned that it was irresponsible of that family’s OBGYN to allow that many babies to come to term (not quite the right word b/c they were premature but you know what I mean…). The doctor I was talking to then suggested that this would have been an ideal scenario for something I believe she refered to as ‘selective termination’ whereby doctors can ‘abort’ just a few of the eggs with a needle. The premise being that the remaining babies have a much better chance of surviving/thriving.
So how would this procedure work? What is the basic technique involved here?
sniffle Selective reduction From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
…The procedure is generally carried out between 9 and 12 weeks of pregnancy. The most common method is to inject a chemical solution into the fetus or fetuses selected for either genetic reasons or for ease of accessibility. Generally, the fetal material is reabsorbed into the woman’s body. While the procedure generally reduces the over-all risk level for the remaining fetus or fetuses, selective reduction does have its own risks, including the possibility that one or more of the remaining fetuses will also die.
Thats so sad. They just randomly pick a baby thats “more accessible” and kill it cause it was sleeping on the wrong side of the bed
There’s another factor; the mother’s feelings. No OB/GYN is going to perform an abortion (selective or otherwise) on a woman without her consent. If a woman insists on carrying all 7 fetuses to term there’s nothing her doctor can do other than try to ensure she does carry all 7 fetuses to term.
Its the doctor’s job to communicate (ad nausium if necessary) how stupid the patient is being and how they’re going to ruin the lives of babies that could otherwise live a normal happy life. Turns out the parents are total quacks (actually just really religious people whose god tells them its ok to endager the lives of living breathing babies) who got their remaining kids taken away by the government.
oh and I got it wrong, the story that inspired the thread was about sextuptlets , not septuplets, my bad.
The mother is a Jehovah’s Witness. I doubt she would have considered an abortion.
Of course, she was perfectly willing to let her children die after they were born when a simple blood transfusion would save them, but to kill them before they were born would be evil.
The quote given doesn’t indicate if the babies were “natural”, from extra-ovulation pills or in-vitro fertilization. If the babies were in-vitro, then an option is to insert (leading to implantation or not) only part of the batch. The “leftovers” last several years, frozen. In Spain you can “adopt an embryo”, have someone’s leftover embryo implanted (if the original parent(s) haven’t had them implanted after N years they are understood to relinquish parental rights).
