At the beginning of the month, I had a post on the “conception-industrial complex”, which referenced the book “Everything Conceivable” by Liza Mundy. Mollie at the Get Religion blog references a recent article in The Washington Post Magazine by Mundy on pregnant women—many of them through in vitro fertilization— who have multiple babies in their wombs and want to go through “selective reduction,” which is another word for killing some of the babies and keeping the one or more you want.
It’s situational ethics and subject to change when it becomes unfashionable. And this is the precarious perch upon which life hangs in the balance.
What hit me right in the gut was the matter-of-fact manner in which the actual procedure is addressed. What part of your heart and mind and soul and conscience do you, as an abortionists, have to shut down or excise all together in order to do this on a regular basis?
And, sure enough, on [sonographer Rachel] Greenbaum’s screen were three little honeycombed chambers with three fetuses growing in them. The fetuses were moving and waving their limbs; even at this point, approaching 12 weeks of gestation, they were clearly human, at that big-headed-could-be-an-alien-but-definitely-not-a-kitten stage of development. Evans has found this to be the best window of time in which to perform a reduction. Waiting that long provides time to see whether the pregnancy might reduce itself naturally through miscarriage, and lets the fetuses develop to the point where genetic testing can be done to see which are chromosomally normal.
… So far, there was nothing anomalous about any of the fetuses. Greenbaum turned the screen toward the patient. “That’s the little heartbeat,” she said, pointing to the area where a tiny organ was clearly pulsing. “And there are the little hands. There’s the head. The body.”
“Oh, my God, I can really see it!” the patient cried. “Oh, my God! I can see the fingers!”
“Okay!” she said, abruptly, gesturing for the screen to be turned away. She began sobbing. There were no tissues in the room, so her husband gave her a paper towel, which she crumpled to her face. The patient spent the rest of the procedure with her hospital gown over her face, so she would not see any more of what was happening.
No matter what lies we tell ourselves, no matter what rhetoric we use to get through the procedure, no matter how we rationalize it, no sane person can deny what is happening there. And so many pro-abortionists don’t bother to deny it anymore. They acknowledge that it is a child being killed, but claim that a woman has a right to kill her own child is he’s still dependent on her for life. Because it’s her body, you know. And in today’s modern world, there’s no such thing as a duty and obligation pressed upon us willingly or unwillingly because of the fact that we’re in that situation. Except taxes, of course.
The "logic of abortion"
Technorati Tags: abortion | selective reduction | infertility |
This is just another chapter in how chillingly evil our society has become. Yes, Dom, I think that you are right in your concern that the article may desensitize many people. Because pregnancy is so internal and intimate, it seems also, in a way, remote.
We have already become densensitized to many evils. In fact, what has been traditionally evil and sick in Judeo-Christianity for millennia has now often been raised to a level of the natural and holy. One need only look to the liberal religious denominations to see how much they have incorporated evil into their beliefs. The blaspheme even the term Judeo-Christian in their self-definitions.
The way our society is heading makes one wonder if we will even be able to recognize any long what is truly good, truly holy, and worth preserving. And when that becomes accomplished, we will have weakened any moral strength needed to survive as a nation under God.
I recall, as a 3rd year medical student back in 1990, asking an ob-gyn who did this procedure ‘how do you decide who dies?’
That really stopped the conversation around the table.
Although I’m all for the woman’s “Right to Know” and I volunteer for a crisis pregnancy outreach program, I ‘m seeing more and more that many women DO know and DO choose, and DO choose to kill their babies. I’ve been sort of numbly sick about that since i realized it. I invested too much, apparently, in the idea that women WOULDN’T EVER abort if they KNEW and if their needs were met.
Honestly, some women abort so they won’t gain weight. Or get stretch marks. Or have to quit partying.
As for “selective reduction”, that term is as chilling as anything else. It doesn’t hide anything.It just reveals us as sicker than we thought.