The quote in the title is embedded in this paragraph in the New York Times Magazine article, The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy:
“I couldn’t have imagined reducing twins for nonmedical reasons,” she said, “but I had an amnio and would have had an abortion if I found out that one of the babies had an anomaly, even if it wasn’t life-threatening. I didn’t want to raise a handicapped child. Some people would call that selfish, but I wouldn’t. Parents who abort for an anomaly just don’t want that life for themselves, and it’s their prerogative to fashion their lives how they want. Is terminating two to one really any different morally?” Dr. Naomi Bloomfield
The first several times I read this quote, I was deeply discouraged. The breezy way in which all children, not just a child with a disability, are presented as commodities under the complete control of parents rather than blessings from God himself is chilling.
But then I saw a glimmer of light. She had equated the morality of two decisions to abort: one to abort a child with a disability, and the other to reduce a pregnancy to a single child.
She is right. Those two decisions are not different morally. Both result in dead children.
And even in our culture which so highly values independence and beauty and an easy life, there is still a great deal of discomfort with the idea of aborting a healthy twin just for the sake of convenience.
Could God use this discomfort to turn people away from the destruction of little babies with disabilities? Could God in his infinite wisdom connect disability to pregnancy reduction so that more people come to the right conclusion more quickly – all children are valuable?
Is that idea any more far-fetched than a politician being used by God to make slavery illegal?
God can do it! Let us pray that he would!
This makes me think of China. With the one-child policy, abortion and the abandonment of chidlren with disabilities are major problems. But it would be rare, very rare that twins would be “reduced.” Multiple birth is the one way that most people could ever legally have more than one child.