I’ve done a fair amount of work abortion and pregnancy issues, including "fetal reduction" and the enormous moral issues it raises. Such “reductions” were first suggested for pregnancies of four, five or more but now people are aborting part of a set of twins. That’s right. And who’s going to explain to the survivor that they were once part of a pair and that they were the lucky one to not get the needle in the heart?
Because there’s been some debate over aborting one of a set of twins, I was interested in this National Post story out of Toronto over a Jewish hospital’s refusal to take part in this procedure. See how the Post handles this matter:
TORONTO -- A Toronto hospital’s refusal to reduce a woman’s twin pregnancy to one fetus — at least partly because of a doctor’s moral objections — has triggered a human-rights fight over the little-known but contentious procedure.
The Ottawa-area patient had been warned that carrying twins at her age could increase the risk of losing the whole pregnancy, and was referred to Mount Sinai Hospital for a “selective reduction.”
That means terminating at least one among multiple fetuses, akin to a partial abortion.
But the institution declined to provide the service, saying its practice was to only reduce triplets or more, unless one of the twins has some kind of anomaly.