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Jenny, 39, desperately wanted another child. She and her husband were already parents, but now found themselves unable to conceive. Years of fertility treatments followed while the couple waited and hoped for good news, enduring invasive medical procedures and spending thousands of dollars in the process.
Six years later, the now 45 year-old Jenny was delighted to learn that she was finally pregnant.
But when Jenny and her husband learned that she was carrying not one but two fertilized embryos, as reported in this New York Times article last Sunday, they elected, through a process known as selective reduction, to give birth to one single child instead of the twins Jenny was carrying:
The idea of managing two infants at this point in her life terrified her. She and her husband already had grade-school-age children, and she took pride in being a good mother. She felt that twins would soak up everything she had to give, leaving nothing for her older children. Even the twins would be robbed, because, at best, she could give each one only half of her attention and, she feared, only half of her love.
Jenny is just one of the women profiled in the article, but her story in particular seems to have struck a nerve with women all over the internet. Reading the rather dubious rationalization Jenny gives for her controversial choice, it's not hard to see why:
“Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn’t had children already or if we were more financially secure,” she said later. “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”
It's hard to put into words why this kind of selective reduction--out of personal preference rather than medical necessity--just feels wrong.
Especially when you are, as I am, pro-choice.
Like many women, my advocacy for a woman's right to choose only grew stronger when I became pregnant myself. Each of my pregnancies was both wanted and planned (though my second pregnancy happened a little sooner than we anticipated--the very day we started "trying" to conceive). My husband and I had discussed, and agreed, that if during either of my pregnancies we discovered there was something seriously wrong with the fetus, we would choose to abort.
We actually had a scare with our youngest, but thankfully everything turned out all right. And I am immensely glad that I never had to face anything worse, because with each pregnancy I bonded so completely with my children that I knew I couldn't have gone through with an abortion. I had no idea that was how pregnancy would affect me.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but that's why I am pro-choice.
I don't think anyone else should legislate what a woman does with her body, because no one else can experience that moment, the instant when she has to consider whether abortion is the right choice for her. Even she can't fully anticipate what being at that crossroads will mean until she reaches it.
Every woman is unique, and every pregnancy is unique, and every factor that goes into influencing her decision is unique to her. You can sympathize, but you can't truly empathize with how she feels, not really.
Still, it's only natural for us to question decisions like the one this woman made. We have so many more options when it comes to our fertility than our mothers did, or their mothers before them. With all the choices available to us, it's inevitable that sometimes we're going to disagree about what the "right" one is. And I think it is perfectly okay to feel uncomfortable with the choices other women make. We all have our own moral compass, and morality and logic are not the same thing.
Let me explain what I mean by that. In a recent discussion on this issue in which I participated over at online forum Metafilter, one particularly strident commenter wrote:
You know, actually, seriously, I think I insist on it: If you are against this...and if you consider yourself pro-choice I want an explanation of what you believe the fundamental ethical difference is between a person who makes a choice with known consequences
