It’s been well over a week since the New York Times published a provocative piece where women are interviewed who, after using fertility drugs and procedures, become pregnant with twins and decide to undergo “selective reduction” for lifestyle reasons. That’s a euphemism for the killing in utero of one perfectly healthy twin in a pregnancy. It’s an unbelievably difficult read if you’re of the mind that ending these lives is a major human rights crisis. But I can’t help but think it’s a difficult read even if you support the right of people to abort any child for any reason at any time in the pregnancy. I wanted to write about it all week but found it too difficult to broach.
Reporter Ruth Padawer and the New York Times itself have been criticized for the treatment of the story. Blogger Bad Rachel uses choice words to compare the twin-culling of Josef Mengele with the practice and asks: “Is there one member of Jill Abramson’s religious order who views the subject of this article … as a piece of awfulness? Maybe not.”
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