The Right To Bear Children...In Any Amount Conceived

Over the past few days, an argument has been emerging over the use of fertility treatment and the higher rate of multiple births because of its use in the United States. It would seem that there is much debate over the carrying of higher order multiples and the offering of selective reduction to prevent such births from occurring. All of this has been brought about over the births of two sets of septuplets in the same 24 hour period.

I am puzzled at the response some people are having over the subject, yet I am drawn to message boards full of well meaning people who obviously haven’t any clue as what it is they are arguing over. I spent about two hours lurking on the AOL message board today, watching the wide array of responses.

It would seem that most people are offended by the use of fertility treatment, saying basically that if God intended these people to have children, they would have been able to conceive naturally without the use of any sort of fertility treatment.

Other seemingly professed anti-abortionists have extrapolated the subject to such extremes that they find themselves on platforms of pro-abortion, saying that mothers who find they are pregnant with multiples after using fertility treatments should accept selective reduction as a means of aborting those unwanted, unneeded fetus’s that would otherwise be born prematurely and with health problems.

What these people seem to be overlooking is the fact that even if a mother chooses selective reduction, there is no guarantee that the remaining fetus’s will remain viable. The procedure can in fact cause the rest of the babies to spontaneously abort because of the other’s dying.

Some of these people actually appear to have come to the conclusion that these babies will be a burden on society and never become normal, functioning, contributing citizens and thus they should be eliminated in the effort to conserve natural resources and as a means to combat over-population.

Let’s assume that these people represent the general populace just for sake of argument. They actually appear to be saying that these higher order multiple children who are conceived via means of fertility treatment are not real children, but in fact “Fakes” that do not deserve basic human rights. Conversely, this would mean that naturally conceived higher order multiples would be socially accepted and garner the same rights as every other naturally conceived singleton child.

If compared side by side, what is the difference in these children other than means of conception? I am very confused. These people appear to be deciding that abortion is okay for those children “Unnaturally” conceived, yet not okay for those those who are “Spontaneously” conceived.

Let’s examine this on a base level. In today’s society, let us look at a young woman who is into hard drugs such as methamphetamines and alcohol abuse and has just found out that she is pregnant. Assume that in a moment of lucidity, she decided that she wanted to abort her unborn child based on the idea that she was using prior to becoming pregnant and afterwards as well.

Should this mother go seek an abortion, she will be faced with many well-meaning people who will try and sway her from having it, offering her alternatives such as adoption and re-hab.

In some states there is a waiting period and required counseling that she must go through before the actual procedure can occur. Chances are, this mother will not end up getting the abortion because of the processes involved.

What becomes of the child should this mother actually carry it to term? There is a good many of mother’s like her who actually do make it to term. These children are often born addicts, malnourished, and with birth defects caused by the drugs taken by the mother. These children are also often either abandoned in the NICU by the mothers or taken home and left to their own devices. I am not sure which is worse.

Let us look at another mother. Let’s say she is of an average maternal age and has fertility problems. They can be caused by anything from genetics, birth control or medicines taken by her mother while pregnant with our mom, or even weight or smoking problems. Perhaps this mother and her husband turned to fertility for pregnancy assistance. Let’s say that she is pregnant with triplets.

From experience, I know that one of the very first things discussed as a mother carrying multiples is selective reduction. It is said that carrying higher order multiples to term is very difficult and rarely happens successfully. These children are more prone to birth defects and development problems because of the shared womb and shorter gestation. So the question is, should selective reduction be an option if abortion really isn’t one in most pregnancy cases?

Under the new mindset forming after the sextuplet births last week, it would appear that the mother on drugs is wrong to seek an abortion for her unborn child and the mother carrying multiples should by all means have that abortion because her children aren’t “Real” and will not be born healthy and have any chance becoming a contributing citizen worthy of breathing the same air as the normally conceived child born with her mother’s drug addiction.

I just do not and cannot understand how people can say that a child isn’t real and how one child doesn’t deserve basic rights and yet another is entitled to them. Are we to look forward to a world with two different groups of people, one with rights because they were conceived naturally and then ones without rights who were conceived with fertility aids of some sort?

These “Fake” children would most likely be relegated to living in camps (like concentration or work camps) or grotto’s of some sort and denied basic quality of life needs such as base medical access and foods, if historical precedent holds true. We saw it happen in Germany with the Nazi’s and we see it every day on TV in our national news reports as well.

Now there is a strain of medical opinion forming that would include selective reduction as the general accepted practice when a mother is pregnant with higher order multiples. She would no longer be faced with any sort of decision as to whether she should or could carry the babies to a safe gestation point. She would be required medically as part of her fertility treatment to have selective reduction and risk losing all of the conceived babies. However, this does nothing to change the general abortion laws. Mother's carrying naturally conceived children are somehow excluded from this new debate.

If this is what we have to look forward to as the new world order, we should all take heed. It’s not just our rights to our bodies as women that will be at stake here, but a matter of our basic human rights under the constitution and that of our children and their children as well and THAT is a scary thought.