Burying the Truth: A Follow-Up

Editor's note. If you wrote in yesterday, please feel free to do so again today. If you didn't, why not join in the conversation? The address is daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

I'm the sort of guy who can walk through an arboretum that is draped with the most beautiful flora in the world, and come away remembering only that I left my change in the Coke machine. My powers of observation are, shall we say, under-developed.

But even I was aware that yesterday's edition of TN&V would stimulate a wave of response. And did it--clearly the single largest in all the years we've run TN&V. [The emails continue to come on even as I was writing this.] So, what had been planned for today--a powerful story of a last-minute decision not to have an abortion--will instead be the subject of Wednesday's TN&V.

The topic that generated a storm of response was an op-ed that ran in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. It not only defended a couple's decision to abort ("selectively reduce") two of their four unborn children, but used it as a club to bash the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and pro-lifers in general.

"Defend" is probably a gross misnomer. Dan Neil's column borders on boastful, as he exults at what he clearly sees as his superior moral insight.

We learn from their op-ed that on their third try at in vitro fertilization, Neil and his wife, Tina, have success. Four of the five embryos that were implanted "set up residence" (in Neil's words).

"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," Neil writes. "We said yes, not really appreciating what that meant." They give the two girls names--Rosalind and Vivian--but abort the two boys, who went without names, at 15 weeks.

Sometimes, and this is an example, something that is wrong in principle takes on an especial repugnance because of the manner in which it is done, the justifications that are offered, and the similarity to difficulties people have overcome in their own lives.

As a pair of family physicians wrote me, the decision to implant five embryos does increase the odds of a successful pregnancy but at what price? Of increasing the chances of multiple gestations. In the Neils' case, and no doubt in many, many similar situations, the response is to abort some of the babies.

Other readers were enraged and baffled by Neil's description of the abortions, which mixed family solidarity (he said he held his wife's hand) with "watching the ultrasound as a needle with potassium chloride found its mark, stopping the heart of one male fetus, then the other"--about as cold-blooded a description as you can imagine.

Several people wrote about ectopic pregnancies. Even though there was no choice in the matter--a baby who had implanted in the fallopian tube could not possibly survive and the mother could easily die when her tube ruptured--the decision devastated the mothers.

The moral calculation (so to speak) that went into the decision to abort the boys over the girls drew special ire. A key seems to be, as Neil wrote, that "Some studies show offspring of older fathers (I'm 47) run a higher risk of autism, and males are four times as likely to be autistic."

This antipathy to the less-than-perfect was an ongoing part of the larger story. You need a little background to understand this fully.

Neil suggests that the decision to abort two of the children was concern over the heightened risk to his wife of carrying multiple babies. They know there are four babies as early as four weeks, "but our doctor told us to wait to see if the number would reduce on its own, as often happens."

Next thing you know the babies are twelve weeks old and genetic tests are taken, "reasoning that if we had to abort two, it would be better to abort any fetuses with genetic abnormalities." It takes two more weeks to get the results back "and by that time Tina was experiencing complications so severe that we had to put her in the hospital."

Even though the "whole time, an awful clock was ticking," they hold off to make sure they abort the "right" kids (any who might have disabilities). Evidently none show up, so they are reduced to aborting the boys because, with an older father, one of the children might have autism and boys are more likely (according to "some studies") to have autism.

I received several beautifully elegant e-mails from the parents or grandparents of children with autism. One wrote that autism tends to be worse when it occurs in girls.

But she drew the exact opposite conclusion from Neil. Even if one of the babies, boy or girl, did develop autism, that did not in any way diminish their worth, or make them any the less an integral part of her family. As she wrote, "It is hard to fight back tears … that anyone could be as ignorant to want to kill a child because it could be Autistic."

Let me conclude with one e-mail that raised important issues I had missed.

"What happens if one of the girls doesn't make it, or has the deformities they were trying to eliminate?" one correspondent wrote. "I wonder if they will ever tell the girls they had two brothers that the parents so selfishly decided to 'terminate.'" The writer adds, "I would be more than just mad if I was one of the girls."

This raises something I hadn't mentioned yesterday. Neil ended his piece by expressing his gratitude to the "physician who performed our reduction." More than that, "When Roz and Viv grow up, I hope one day I can introduce them to her. I think she'd be proud."

Many, many years ago I attended a workshop that addressed the effect of abortion on surviving siblings. It remains to this day one of the most powerful messages I have ever heard and one of the least researched.

Kids often know, even when not told, that something awful has happened. Their responses are never good, ranging from a desperate attempt not to anger the parents to despondency over surviving--and everything in between.

Maybe the abortionist will "be proud" when she sees "Roz and Viv." I doubt seriously that will be their response to the woman who took their brothers' lives.

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