"But I only wanted ONE baby!"

So in the abortion debate, we have mostly been talking about women with unplanned pregnancies. But what about those women who intentionally got pregnant, but still get an abortion?

Take for example when the mother finds out she has TWINS. In a growing number of cases now, women are saying to themselves "I didn't sign up for this!"

So she aborts one them.


just terrible, I can't believe women do this:
http://www.parents.com/blogs/dadaba...ghts/the-half-abortion-only-keeping-one-twin/

One woman wrote:

The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy
The New York Times, August 10, 2011

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician’s examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen. She didn’t want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment — and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny’s abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt.

“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.”

But what began as an intervention for extreme medical circumstances has quietly become an option for women carrying twins. With that, pregnancy reduction shifted from a medical decision to an ethical dilemma. We still have to work out just how far we’re willing to go to construct the lives we want.

Jenny’s decision to reduce twins to a single fetus was never really in doubt. 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 desperately wanted another child, but not at the risk of becoming a second-rate parent. “This is bad, but it’s not anywhere as bad as neglecting your child or not giving everything you can to the children you have,” she told me, referring to the reduction. She and her husband worked out this moral calculation on their own, and they intend to never tell anyone about it. Jenny is certain that no one, not even her closest friends, would understand, and she doesn’t want to be the object of their curiosity or feel the sting of their judgment.

This secrecy is common among women undergoing reduction to a singleton. Doctors who perform the procedure, aware of the stigma, tell patients to be cautious about revealing their decision. (All but one of the patients I spoke with insisted on anonymity.) Some patients are so afraid of being treated with disdain that they withhold this information from the obstetrician who will deliver their child.

What is it about terminating half a twin pregnancy that seems more controversial than reducing triplets to twins or aborting a single fetus? After all, the math’s the same either way: one fewer fetus. Perhaps it’s because twin reduction (unlike abortion) involves selecting one fetus over another, when either one is equally wanted. Perhaps it’s our culture’s idealized notion of twins as lifelong soul mates, two halves of one whole.



I wonder, how on earth are these women ever going to explain what they did, to the other twin, their child that they chose to keep?


[video=youtube;7sRYz7IDru0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sRYz7IDru0[/video]

Claire Culwell was living what she thought was a normal teenage life in the home of her adopted Christian parents when she decided that the time had come to connect with her birth mother. What Claire discovered from her biological mother rocked her world, changing her life forever. Claire's biological mother had been forced to abort at the age of 13, after five months of pregnancy. As a little fetus in the womb, Claire inexplicably survived the surgical abortion, but her twin sister did not. A few weeks later, her mother was brought back to the same abortion clinic to have the botched job finished, but the doctor refused to perform what would now be classified as a late-term abortion. Claire was born two weeks after the scheduled abortion, weighing a mere three pounds.

After the shocking revelation, Claire understood why so many health issues had constantly plagued her. She heard how the attempt on her life through abortion had left its mark on her, dislocating her hips, giving her club feet, and inflicting other injuries on her, injuries which still manifest themselves to this day.

 

I've always wanted twins since I was little. So I can honestly say that if I ever got pregnant with twins, even now when I am not ready for it, I would not abort because that'd probably be my only chance. lol

Granted I also only want two children so I think after the fact I would seek a tubal ligation or see if my hunny would get a vasectomy.

 

To be honest I really don't know how to comment on this, it is something I've not heard about before. I have heard of a twin being aborted because it was endangering the other one which would have led to both twins dying in the womb .. but apart from that I really don't know what to say.

 

It seems like these days, women want to pick and choose exactly when and how many children they want to have.
And any inconvenient children that start growing inside them at the wrong time, they just abort.

I have heard women say things like, "I want children, just not now. Maybe in 5 years..."
or even "I don't need another boy, we already have 3 of them", implying that if it had happened to be a girl, the mother might have kept it.

 

As is their right.

and this is a problem how exactly?

sex selective abortion is illegal, what ever may be implied doesn't make it a fact.

 

Apologies, they are illegal in the UK, but it would appear not so overall in the USA.

 

But there is no real way to prevent sex-selective abortions, so long as abortion is legal. As soon as the woman finds out the gender of her fetus, her choice about whether or not to get an abortion can be influenced. It's not as if these woman tell the doctor "I want an abortion because I don't want a girl".

Another irony here, in India and China it is illegal for women to see ultrasounds of their babies, or for the doctor to inform the parents what the gender is. But in Texas, women are required by law to see the ultrasound before they can get an abortion. In both cases, the ultrasound laws are attempting to reduce abortions.

I think most people recognize that it is not okay to abort a pregnancy just because you were hoping for a different gender, though it can be difficult to prevent this.
But maybe as abortion becomes ever more trivialized, this will be seen as just yet another choice for the woman to make, what gender baby she wants.

 

Lets be honest here the enforced viewing of ultrasounds prior to an abortion in the US is purely to try and invoke a change of decision by the woman, there is no medical requirement for them . .so in my opinion enforced viewing in the US should be removed from the requirement, I also feel that a doctor should have the right to refuse to divulge the sex of a fetus during prenatal scans, this would pretty much remove the sex selection item from the abortion debate.

 

two separate doctors must agree to the abortion taking place, if one does not agree then the abortion does not happen, of course this doesn't stop the woman from seeking other doctors in order to secure an abortion.

In reality if a woman is dead set on obtaining an abortion on gender then there is little to stop her as long as she lies to both sets of doctors and can convince them it is not gender related, however if she is found out she is liable to prosecution, as is any doctor performing an abortion purely for gender.

There are exceptions to the sex selective abortions which are allowed, such as a gender related disability which would incur a non viable fetus.

 

These days? Perhaps you need to brush up on your ancient abortion history, women have been doing this for centuries and have passed on the knowledge of medical abortifacient herbs to their daughters, granddaughters and so on and so forth. This is nothing new.

 

Yes, but typically these herbal abortifacients only worked very early in a pregnancy. So fetuses older than 9 weeks were safe.
But in the modern age, with vacuum suction and synthetic abortion drugs, no fetus is safe. Even the ones that can survive outside the womb.

 

Hahaha no fetus is safe? Really? You make it sound like everyone is just going to stop choosing to have families altogether.

 

I find your signature interesting, you do realize that if you change the words "apes and chimpanzees" to "men" the quote is just as valid.

 

I dont see a middle ground in this. Either we consider the foetus at some stage of development a person deserving all the rights, and then abortion should be allowed only when mother is endangered. Or we dont, and then theres no reason to put any restrictions on abortions. So I think abortions should be allowed based on gender or because of twins, and I am saying that as a twin.

 

We already do that, elective abortions are illegal after 24 weeks and are only legally allowed for life endangerment to the woman, or fetal disability incompatible with life.

 

Once the woman is given the "choice", there is not really any way to make sure she will not abuse this choice. I think most people, however, recognize that abortion is a serious thing and is not appropriate for just any whimsical reason.

With the "two minus one" abortion, it obviously makes one question whether the woman really needed to abort one if she is keeping the other. And it also leaves us to wonder how far some of these women are actually taking their "choice". It's not as easy to have empathy for these women's decisions, not unless you assume the fetus has absolutely no value whatsoever.

 

Anders, do you really believe that no fetus is safe from an abortion? Do you really believe that all women consider abortion or that no women are pro-life thus ultimately protecting a fetus from abortion?

Because that is what you strongly implied in post #14.

 

For a start - how common is this? You have given one example off of a blog which may nor may not have been true and another example of a 13 YEAR OLD CHILD having a "forced abortion"

But the real truth is that the majority or women seeking an abortion already have at least one child

 

Bunkum!! Do you know what they used to do for an "impacted labour"? That is when the foetal head is stuck in the birth canal. They used to decapitate the foetus to save the mother

And before we had vacuum suction there was always the handy coat hanger.

These days we have more reliable abortifacients that allow earlier abortions

 

This sort of ties in with gender selective abortion as well. Where a couple can get repeatedly pregnant and just keep aborting their children until they get the gender they desire.

Talk about sick.

 

Okay, look, they have a right to abort, but seriously, if you wanted to get pregnant, and you have IVF, you KNOW that a multiple pregnancy is a risk. And this Jenny claims not to be financially stable enough to care for twins, but she has spent six years having IVF, which costs a fortune, so obviously she has money sitting around somewhere.

I am sorry, but despite the fact I am extremely pro choice, you cannot sook about how hard it is for you to fall pregnant, then when you are finally blessed with a pregnancy, choose to abort one of the fetuses because you don't want twins. IMO you don't deserve to be a parent.

 

I do not like the idea either, but then again, what if the ivf produced Quadruplets or sextuplets, would the mother be ok reducing that number?