Since I recently wrote about pain, labor, and birth, I figured I would follow it up with an ethical discussion about birth reductions. Actually, it wasn't planned this way at all, I just happened to recently read an article on birth reductions and felt the need to discuss it. The article, in the NYTimes magazine this past weekend, discussed the increase in pregnancy reductions from twins to singletons. Although this procedure in which a doctor goes into the mothers womb and injects a fetus with a needle full of potassium chloride had previously been done to reduce multiples to twins, it has now become an avenue for women to decide if they want only one child instead of two. For the most part, this procedure is utilized in women that have used fertility drugs, artificial insemination, IVF (in vitro fertilization), or some other method to get pregnant when nature wasn't taking its course. Up until recently, the procedure of reducing multiples to twins was done to increase the safety of the mother and her unborn children, but now it has become more of an elective procedure. Some will still argue that having twins carries more risks than carrying a single child, but according to doctors, the increased risk of carrying twins versus a single child to term is negligible. Most women who have twins have uncomplicated births and both children and mother come out healthy in the end. At this point, electing to have a reduction of twins to a singleton is more of a lifestyle choice more than anything else. Women claim that they could not support twins, or that it would require to much energy, or some other reason. Accordingly, a lot of doctors will support these women in their reductions, but conversely, there are a growing number of doctors who are refusing to reduce from twins to a singleton simply because a woman wants to. And personally, I applaud these doctors who are refusing to do this procedure.
Here is why I applaud these doctors. If a woman can not get pregnant and resorts to alternative fertilization methods to impregnate herself, then she should be willing to deal with the consequences of her actions. One of the consequences, which the woman knew going into the procedure, was an increased likelihood of having multiples. If a woman was not prepared for the possibility of having multiples, then in my mind, she should not have made the choice to get pregnant artificially. At a time when a woman has almost unlimited choices in what kind of sperm donor she wants to receive from, be it race, hair color, intelligence, eye color, height, etc, woman now have the choice to eliminate all but one fetus in their womb, tantamount to having a partial abortion in the womb. I find a problem with this. There was a point in the article where one doctor said that "Ethics evolve with technology." I feel that this doctor is misguided in his reasoning regarding ethics and technology. If you follow what he says, then with the constant improvement of technology, there will eventually be no need for ethical considerations because technology will be able to make all the choices for us. Reductions to singletons wasn't done much until recently because the technology wasn't there to ensure that a full miscarriage didn't happen or that some other complication arose due to the reduction. However, now that technology has improved, miscarriages have been reduced, it is now ethically OK according to this doctor to eliminate all unwanted fetuses down to one if desired by the mother. Where does this end? Women already have the choice to eliminate their fetus if it has down syndrome or some other genetic malady that will "drain the parents" resources. So what will happen when we can get a perfect look at how our unborn child will turn out, their future intelligence, their future looks, and we don't like what we see, will it become ethically OK to terminate that pregnancy as well? It seems as if we are taking natural selection into our own hands and playing God, deciding who will live and who will die. It may be a morbid view of what takes place in these reductions, but that is essentially what happens. In a study that was done on reductions from two to one, if there was a choice between eliminating a girl vs. a boy, most women chose to eliminate the boy.
I personally think that pregnancy reductions are simply ludicrous and a just another choice for women to utilize to remove some of the responsibility for their actions. I know I will probably be hated for my next statement, but if a woman can't get pregnant naturally, then maybe she shouldn't get pregnant at all. Not all women were meant to be mothers. If a woman can't get pregnant, there is a reason that she can't. Just because there is a desire to be a mother, in my mind, does not mean that women should go beyond the natural process to get pregnant. If they do decide to use artificial methods to get pregnant, then they should be willing to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ethics, as opposed to the doctor's point of view, should dictate the development and utilization of technology, not the other way around. If we completely disregard ethical considerations when it comes to improving technology, then we will eventually head towards a society completely void of ethical considerations. What happens when our children grow up, especially those that could have had a brother or sister, and find out what really occurred? It will do nothing but teach them that they can do what they want without regard to moral or ethical obligations, because they got lucky. Their mother chose to let them live over the others in her womb and as such they can now decide who lives and who dies. A little extreme point of view? Yes, but at the rate we are going, not entirely unrealistic. To sum this all up, we must live by ethical standards, ones that dictate what is right and what is wrong and be able to live with the consequences of our actions. If we can not figure out how to do this, then I fear our society will be heading down the tubes. In any case, today just be glad that your alive and you weren't singled out for an injection of potassium chloride while you were in your mother's womb.
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