You're killing the same creature to which you're dedicating your life

It all began with the cover story of the August 14 edition of The New York Times Magazine called "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy". As Albert Mohler details, Reporter Ruth Padawer first takes her readers into the examination room of an obstetrician who is about to abort one of two fetuses within the womb of a woman identified as “Jenny”. Padawer’s report is largely about that phenomenon (reducing twins to a single pregnancy by eliminating one fetus), for the reduction of a pregnancy from twins to a single baby is not about increasing the odds of a healthy delivery, but about the ominous rise of what amounts to personal preference.

This “reduction” has become an all-too-common but seldom spoken of procedure in a society of designer children, designer families, and designer lives. And the “designer” in all of this is the autonomous self (though one doubts that the autonomous self in the womb would make the same choice as her mother).

Yet the most surprising response to these reductions has not been from the camp of the pro-lifers but rather the pro-choicers. Abortion supporters are having unexpected—and unfavorable—responses as the muddled logic surrounding abortion gives way to the cold, hard truth now confronting them. And this brings me to the reason for writing this post. William Saletan over at Slate has written an insightful piece that I wanted to share in part:

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This bifurcated mindset 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. Under federal law, anyone who injures or kills a "child in utero" during a violent crime gets the same punishment as if he had injured or killed "the unborn child's mother," but no such penalty applies to "an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman … has been obtained."

Reduction destroys this distinction. It combines, in a single pregnancy, a wanted and an unwanted fetus. In the case of identical twins, even their genomes are indistinguishable. You can't pretend that one is precious and the other is just tissue. You're killing the same creature to which you're dedicating your life.

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HT: Stand To Reason