Is terminating a fetus morally, right? It has been said that a fetus is not a person but just living cells. Multiple birth reduction is used to eliminate one or more fetuses from the womb because the child is unwanted, unhealthy for the mother, unhealthy for the other children, or financially unstable. Are any of these reasons good enough to kill a child? Is there any reason good enough? In an article I have read called, Preparation for Practice in the new millennium: a discussion of the moral implications of multifetal pregnancy reduction, written by Ann-Marie Begley, she discusses the moral rights of MFPR (multifetal pregnancy reductions) and interviews a couple that is pregnant with 7 babies and interested in MFPR. In the New York Times magazine, I found another great article written by Ruth Padawer that discusses how the MFPR works and what it is good for. This article is more for the drug rather than the other article I found that was written by Ann-Marie Begley who is against MFPR. They both have very interesting views on the topic.
The relevance for my first source which I found at the online website “New York Times” written by Ruth Padawer turned out to be good. They focus mostly on interviews and stories of families that decide to use the MFPR, Which is important to know because it is a real-life situation and we get the chance to read and see how they are handled. The source was posted on August 10, 2011, which is very well up to date. This is a very unheard-of procedure that even I was unaware of until it came time to write this paper and I stumbled across it. The article could seem a little superficial because it mainly is directed toward interviews and it doesn’t give any real good reasons for why MFPR is good except for the heat factor. All the other reasons seemed tiny and not very well backed up. The reliability of the source is strong. It comes from a very popular newspaper/website called New York Times. Ruth Padawer is a very successful woman, she has received several awards for her writing, and her work has been featured on the PBS television show “Media Matters,” NPR show “On the Media” and Columbia Journalism Review. She also has taught at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism since 1992 and she holds an M.S. degree from Columbia’s journalism school and a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She also uses real doctors’ names as sources for her article and many particular dates. Padawer is a trustworthy writer, after all, that she has accomplished over the years she is very good at what she does. With that said, I don’t fully agree with her opinion on MFPR.
The relevance for the second article I choose that was written by Ann-Marie Begley was more along the lines of what I was looking for. It had interviews with a couple that was struggling to decide whether they were keeping their 7 children or using the MFPR. It also discusses the opinions of the midwife and how she handles the situation. She talked a great deal on the moral side of it and is right. It was published in the year 2000; it is 13 years old but still helpful. Things have changed a lot in the last 13 years but people’s morals haven’t and that’s the main topic throughout this article. I was unable to locate the website it came from, and it was hard to find any information on her. I found that she is a lecturer at the School of Nursing & Midwifery located in Ireland. The source was very well written but not very reliable. Her views on the moral side were very well put together though. Although I was unable to locate exactly where this source came from I still feel that she deserves some credibility. I agreed with a lot of what she had to say. She was very fair to the people who chose to use MFPR and wasn’t harsh toward them at all.
After reading over these sources I seemed to like the one written by Ann-Marie Begley the most just for the simple fact that she had discussed the moral side of MFPR. One paragraph from the “New York Time” article that stood out tremendously was “Consider the choice of which fetus to eliminate: if both appear healthy (which is typical with twins), doctors aim for whichever one is easier to reach. If both are equally accessible, the decision of who lives and who dies is random. To the relief of patients, it’s the doctor who chooses — with one exception. If the fetuses are of different sexes, some doctors ask the parents which one they want to keep.” Does this sound like they even care that they are about to kill an unborn child? Is it just a random choice? Why not think of adoption? For example, a fifteen-year-old girl gets raped and ends up pregnant. Would you kill that child because you feel like if you look at that child it will just make you remember the horrible thing you went through? Most women would say yes. Adoption is what I would look into, it’s a hard decision for any woman but the morally right thing to do is let that baby live and give him/her to a loving family who could take great care of them.
Everyone has a purpose in life whether you know what it is or not. So what makes this unborn child any less of a person? They have a purpose too. Say a woman has been taking injections and all kinds of different drugs to get pregnant and she finally does, but come to find out it’s not just one baby but two. She has been trying for years and years to get pregnant and when it finally happens and God blesses her with two healthy babies. She doesn’t think she is financially stable to raise two children and she doesn’t think she can give them both the attention they need and she can’t handle two so she has an MFPR. Not one of these reasons is good enough to kill an unborn child; there is not one good reason. With that being said, some women who have up to 7 or 8 babies are worried about their health of them and if they will all survive the full term. If it was meant to be that 3 of those babies don’t make it then that’s what was supposed to happen, but choosing to not give them a chance to make it and beat the odds seems heartless. Everything happens for a reason and adoption should be your only choice!
