Is selective fetus reduction murder? Imagine the following. You discover that you are pregnant with twins. But hey: You didn’t want twins. You only wanted one child. So, you decide to abort one of the fetuses. Did you commit murder? Oh, let me add that both twins are perfectly healthy. Hence, there is not even the issue of saving one in order to keep the other alive. Barring some accident, both will come out of the womb perfectly healthy. Now, since early abortions are justified, then what could possibly be wrong with killing one of the twins when, to begin with, one had only wanted one child?
Painfully, I am not recounting a novel. I am not recounting the poignant dilemma of Sophie’s Choice. Rather, I am recounting a form of decision making that some women are making nowadays. And I must confess to being utterly mortified. Alas, this may reflect my own intellectual shortcomings. But for me, the very idea of choosing to kill one of two healthy children comes so very dangerously close to seeming like a form of eugenics.
In the 15 July 2010 issue of Elle, we get just such a story. And what makes it so difficult for me to not think of eugenics when I reflect upon that story is that the couple chooses to kill one of the unborn twins simply because bringing the twins into the world would get in the way of the rather fine life style that the couple wants to live. There is something very fulsome about this, especially when there is a rather noble option available, namely putting one of the twins up for adoption.
How, one wonders, could the couple not have considered the option of putting the other child up for adoption? And if they could live with killing the child, is there any reason to think that they could not live with knowing that the child was being cared for and loved by a couple who desperately wanted a child but could not have one? But if the latter constitutes deep psychological torment whereas the first does not, then we have a deep, deep problem with regard to attaching the right value to life.
Just under a decade ago, I wrote an op-ed piece entitled “Will the Less-than-Perfect still be loved?” In that essay, I imagined parents aborting an unborn child because the child’s skin or eyes, say, will not be of the right color. Regrettably, we are getting much closer to that view of children than I would ever have imagined.
Most people in Western culture balk at the idea of arranged marriages, because it is supposed that marriage should flow from the love between two people. Well, our attitude toward bringing children into the world suggests that we are increasingly valuing children in the wrong way. We want them to fit into our plans, where parental love as its best is about parents making the most significant of sacrifices in order that their children will flourish. This is the insight that animates Michael McFall’s book Licensing Parents and my book The Family and the Political Self.
I noted much earlier that abortion is legal; and, to the surprise of many perhaps, I am of the opinion that abortion should remain legal. But as with many options available in life, we should not avail ourselves of those options simply because we can.
Just so, we should be about cultivating an attitude of valuing children in society; and that we are simply not doing so if selective fetus reduction is increasingly seen as an available option simply because a woman has children in the uterus than she had planned on.
This brings me back to the question that animates this blog-entry: Is selective fetus reduction murder, it being understood that issues are not a concern at all? My own view is that if it is not murder, then it is surely the cousin of murder. In any case, the practice certainly bespeaks a moral attitude that is abominable. Selective fetus reduction is about choosing who shall live and who shall die; and it is about doing so in a way that is particularly pernicious and arbitrary and callous. How does a loving mother choose which of her healthy unborn infants should die?
Alas, the history of Nazi Germany shows that we can live with evil all around us if in fact everyone all around is accepting of that evil. The fact that the story appeared in Elle is indicative of how close the American society has become to being a society that is tolerant of evil against the most innocent of all, namely infants.
Why, it is increasingly the case that we are more animated about tearing down a building designated as a historical landmark or having animals be kept in a zoo than killing a healthy unborn child. If someone were to go out and kill a chimpanzee there would be an uproar. Yet, Elle publishes a story about a couple who chooses to kill one of two perfectly healthy unborn twin infants because having both of the children would not fit in with the couple’s life style.
Alas, it may very well be that we are not on our way to becoming a morally vapid society. Rather, with selective fetus reduction in tow, it turns out that we have reached that destination. It is just that we keep calling it progress because, after all, it is yet another instance of the increase of liberty.
