From a pro-choice perspective, it seems it all comes down to intent.
Pro-choicers are in favor of abortion rights—but when a mother-to-be selectively aborts just one of her two fetuses, even pro-choicers get uncomfortable. […]
In Slate, William Saletan attempts to unravel the reasons behind the discomfort.
At least two pro-lifewriters have expressed befuddlement: If you are OK with abortion, why aren’t you OK with selective reduction? “After all, a reduction is an abortion,” Saletan writes. But it all comes down to the “bifurcated mindset [that] permeates pro-choice thinking. Embryos fertilized for procreation are embryos; embryos cloned for research are ‘activated eggs.’ A fetus you want is a baby; a fetus you don’t want is a pregnancy.” With a reduction, you can no longer have that distinction, because both a wanted and an unwanted fetus exist in the same pregnancy. And someday, the wanted fetus will be walking around outside your body, “a living reminder of what you exterminated.”
And sometimes, I’m sure, a fetus can one day be a pregnancy and the next day be a baby, all during the same pregnancy depending on the mother’s state of mind. So does the number of fetuses matter, or is it the perspective that needs changing?
by 
Leave a Reply