Burying the Truth

Editor's note. I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this column. Write to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

We can all agree that when pro-abortionists get their mitts on the abortion issue, not only is truth the first casualty, perspective, coherence, and the ability to evaluate their own behavior are also often thrown overboard for good measure. Having said that, a column that appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times may take the cake.

It's one thing to be smarmy. It's quite another to use what is conveyed as a possible tragedy in the making to promote your political agenda, as does Dan Neil, author of "The abortion debate brought home," subtitled, "He and his wife have always been pro-choice; recently, they were forced to make the Choice."

We know from the opening paragraph that two of the four babies his wife was carrying (the two boys) had recently been "selectively reduced." What we can't appreciate this early in the essay is Neil's astonishing ability to deflect responsibility, and his remarkable lack of self-reflection.

Neil and his wife, Tina, had twice before tried in vitro fertilization. On the third attempt, four of the five embryos successfully "set up residence."

Neil writes, "Beforehand, the fertility specialist asked us if we were OK with 'reduction' -- also known as selective abortion--in the event that too many took hold. We said yes, not really appreciating what that meant."

"From Day One," his wife's pregnancy was a "white knuckle" affair, "and had it gone on as it was going, Tina's health would have been in jeopardy, according to her doctor." Therefore, "We don't feel guilty. We don't feel ashamed. We're not even really sad, because terminating these fetuses -- at 15 weeks' gestation -- was a medical imperative," Neil writes.

"We didn't want to. We didn't mean to. We didn't do anything wrong, which is to say, we did everything right."

Everything? Really?

By way of preface, if they are convinced that his wife's health would be at risk if all four babies were carried to term, doesn't it still seem rather odd that they aren't even sad that the lives of two of their children have been ended?

They aren't sad (after three rounds of in vitro fertilization procedures) that two of the four children whose fingerprints and toenails are present will be extinguished? That two of the four children, who, if you stroked their lips, would make a sucking motion, were about to die? That two of the four children whose hearts are pumping several quarts of blood through their bodies every day would have poison pumped into their hearts?

And--just asking here--does it really free Neil from moral responsibility to okay implanting five human embryos on the grounds that he hadn't "really appreciated" what it meant he'd be doing if too many "set up residence"? 

You have to read the entire op-ed to grasp just how self-righteous Neil can be on so many different levels. He begins by trying to link their actions to the Supreme Court decision last month upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. This has zero connection, but Neil insists it does anyway.

But there's more.

We're told they knew at four weeks they "had too many fetuses," Neil writes, but held off to see (as their doctor told them) "if the number would reduce on its own, as often happens." (It'd be interesting to know what was going through his or her mind when the doctor made this recommendation.)

But there's more.

The next significant marker in the story is two months later when they begin to make the decision which kids do they "reduce."

At "about 12 weeks," Neil writes, "we underwent a type of genetic testing (chorionic villus sampling, similar to amniocentesis), reasoning that if we had to abort two, it would be better to abort any fetuses with genetic abnormalities." (My emphasis.)

"The results took two weeks to get back, and by that time Tina was experiencing complications so severe that we had to put her in the hospital. The whole time, an awful clock was ticking."

Let me get this straight. Your rationale is that you are aborting two of the four babies because the greater number presents a threat to Tina Neil's health, but even though "an awful clock is ticking," you hold off to make sure you abort the "abnormal" children?

Throughout this entire piece you can't help but be amazed by Neil's inability to see any of the implications of what he is saying. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in what comes next (which follows in the heels of several paragraphs dedicated to excoriating people like you and me).

"Some wanted to know how we decided to keep the girls," he writes. Partly, it's "how the fetuses were arranged," but also partly such other factors as "some studies" that "show offspring of older fathers (I'm 47) run a higher risk of autism, and males are four times as likely to be autistic."

Having exacerbated the risk to his wife to maximize the chances of aborting any "abnormal" kids, now he "reduces" the boys out of existence on the one-in-a-blue-moon chance that one of them might be autistic!

"Still, I had reservations about bringing girls into the world now, when forces seemed to be aligning to disenfranchise them (nine of 10 GOP presidential candidates favor reversing Roe vs. Wade)," Neil writes. "I hate to think my girls will have to fight the battles their mothers and grandmothers fought."

What a "dilemma" (so to speak) for Neil. Do you (as he tells us he did) hold your wife's hand, "watching the ultrasound as a needle with potassium chloride found its mark, stopping the heart of one male fetus, then the other" because one of them might be autistic, or do you switch targets and poison the two girls because there's a battle over Roe v. Wade?

Neil concludes by praising the doctors involved ("parents" all) for their compassion and for regarding "abortion with the greatest gravity." And for more….

"And yet they are obliged to be circumspect, if not downright fearful. And who can blame them? The physician who performed our reduction asked that her name not be used, for fear that she might be terrorized by some gun-toting anti-abortion extremist."

I don't believe for a minute that Neil believes half of the vitriolic nonsense that he has written. But, I suspect, it does serve a necessary purpose that is far more important than truth telling.

Who is responsible for the entire chain of decisions that culminated in the deaths of his two unborn sons, who, unlike his unborn daughters, were never given names? Justice Kennedy? The "government"? "Gun-toting, anti-abortion extremists"? No, none of them.

But better foist the responsibility on them than acknowledge the truth and have to live with that the rest of your life.

If you have any comments or questions, please write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.