There is a woman I know who we’ll call C. She is a career woman who is very into her work.
When she was 38 she started feeling a lot of pressure from society, and from her own biological clock, to get pregnant.
C and her husband decided that they would have just one child. They thought this would allow her to keep her career going, and have the parental experience, without too much distraction from work.
Well she got pregnant, but after an early ultrasound, she discovered she is carrying twins.
So now she is about 9 weeks pregnant and is contemplating having a ‘selective reduction’ in which one of the babies would be aborted.
As she puts it, she only wanted one baby. Twins are a lot of work and she probably would not be able to keep her long hours at work with 2 babies.
If she does get the proceedure done, is this better than, worse than, or just the same as any other kind of abortion?
Tricky question, because if you condemn the abortion of one child for the sake of convenience, it’s the thin end of the wedge to condemning all abortion except in the direst case of necessity.
Yet aborting a twin because two is too many seems like the most heinous abuse of abortion as a lifestyle choice.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say it’s morally wrong to have an abortion for the sake of convenience. My justification for being pro-choice is that the mother’s right to control her own body supercedes whatever nebulous right to life exists for the fetus. That doesn’t mean, though, that the fetus has no right to life at all, and may be morally aborted for any reason.
In a case of competing rights, circumstances affect the equation. In these circumstances, I’d say it’s wrong.
I’m in favor of those who are affected having the choice. However, it seems to me that aborting one twin would be very dicey regarding the future mental health of both mother and father, the health of the marriage and the mental health of the surviving twin.
How could you ever, from then on looking at the surviving child without wondering what if … ? That has just got to affect your future actions.
The “what if” question is one that aborting a single fetus raises and can be difficult, but with a survivor around as a perpetual reminder it seems to me it would be near intolerable.
I believe the tried and true method is to give one of the twins up for adoption at birth. The evil one usually ends up in the family with more money and power (which is usually not the birth mothers family) but usually the good twin can come and claim his birthright years later.
I don’t see this as any different than if she had one child and fell pregnant two years later and aborted. She’s chosen not to have more than one child. Those people who think her reasoning is wrong will think the same whether or not the child being aborted is alone or a twin, I would guess.
Autz, what do you think ? Is it the same as any other abortion, better or worse in your opinion ? Would this opinion be the same if it was an abortion two years after giving birth to the first ?
I think I’m with Goo on this one. I don’t think someone should have to have more children than they are capable of caring for. I have to admit, it sounds creepy, but legally, I think she should be allowed to abort. Morally, too, because it’s better for the one surviving child to have a good quality of life, rather than the two children to have parents unable/unwilling to care for them.
—What kind of person would kill one of her own twins just because her pwecious widdle career might suffer? —
Well, a person who has interests and plans, unlike the fetus she’s killing.
How many animals have you killed, or contributed to the killing of, just in the last week? How many of them DID have experiences and expectations for their lives, as well as familial bonds?
Actually, I can differentiate: and as it happens, the fetus comes out way behind.
Sorry, but IMHO, I think it is simply incoherent to maintain that an unthinking fetus is even close to the moral worth of even the stupiest cow: which itself is too small for most people, even pro-lifers, to take into consideration.
But please: provide your rationale for why the first being is of more moral worth than the second. Please: expose your essentialism as clearly as possible.
This thread is about whether or not a woman should abort one of her twins for the sake of her career and convenience.
This thread is not about why cows aren’t as important as babies. Nor will I even begin to answer that question because it is, by far, the absolute STUPIDEST question I have ever seen on the SDMB. Plus it would be a total hijack.
If you honestly don’t know the answer, I suggest therapy.
I’d like to know how they can abort one child and leave the other unharmed. Is one sucked out, or just injected with a heart stopper and left to mummify in-utero?
I don’t see why pointing out that I think the fetuses are of less moral interest than even adult cows (which most seem to have no problems with eating simply for convienience) is irrelevant to the OP, which asks about the moral considerations of killing one of two twins.
That you find it stupid only shows how far you’ll go to resist any challenge to your views on the moral worth of fetuses, or ever having to defend your assertions.
To recap: you are the one who asserted that killing a fetus for mere family planning reasons is morally horrendous, deserving of nasty ridicule. But when challenged, you refuse to explain that WHY it is, and why killing creatures with far more impressive moral capacities for even more trivial reasons is hunky-dory? Because that question is STUPID and simply asking it suggests the need for THERAPY? Color me unimpressed with this sort of non-rebuttal.
I don’t think the OP was trying to start a debate on the relative worth of human fetuses and cows. The question was about the relative morality of different situations of abortion.
If you see nothing wrong with abortion in any scenario, presumably your answer to the OP would be “just the same.” Personally, I think the problem in this is that it is likely to cause pain to the twin who does survive, if they ever find out. I would feel a great sense of loss if I found out I had a twin who was aborted. Then again, maybe the kid will be glad they are an only child.
A variation of this issue commonly comes up as part of in-vitro fertilization. The woman is hormonally stimulated to produce lots of eggs, they are retrieved, fertilized with the sperm, allowed to divide for a few days, and then those embryos that divided successfully are put into the uterus. There’s only about a 10% chance that any embryos will attach and go full term, so the idea is to implant several (like 5 or 6, if you get that many).
Before going through all of this, we had to sign a paper stating that we would agree to selective reduction if any more than 3 successfully attached and began developing. With more than 3, the odds of losing all of them was very high. Obviously, no clinic can force anyone to have the selective reduction, but they have you sign the paper to emphasize their point.
In this in-vitro situation, I feel that the selective reduction is morally justified, because you are trying to ensure that you will indeed end up with living and healthy offspring.
But in the poster’s scenario, where there are only 2 developing, and the doctor is not recommending selective reduction for some unusual medical condition, my opinion is that it is immoral in that case.
If she absolutely doesn’t want a second child, she can give it away upon birth. There are thousands of infertile couple who would love to adopt domestically.
But of course, from a legal standpoint, she can do whatever she wants.
I wonder if her attitide about all of this will change as the pregnancy progresses. Maybe her drive, ambition, and motivation will change focus from being a great career person to being a great parent. The world could use more great parents.
This example seems fishy to me. It just seems like autz perhaps concieved in his/her head a dispicable example of a cold, heartless woman simply giving birth for the purposes of ‘parental experience’.
“She would not be able to keep her long hours at work with 2 babies.”
As if with one, you can just leave them in a stroller all day while you climb your way to the top of the corporate ladder.
I think, and I definitely may be wrong, that autz is trying to come up with an example that would make hard core pro-choicers change their mind. It’s as if I came in here and said:
I have a friend, let’s call her…marbaby, and she wants to get an abortion because she thinks it will make her waist thinner and she thinks killing is cool.