wink     ;)

She said that she’d write about the Two-Minus-One article if I did too. So she did. A long time ago. And I’m just getting around to it now.

So, yes, first off: totally the woman’s right to choose. These are unusual circumstances: 2-to-1 reduction after sucessful IVF implantation. But despite the circumstances, it’s still the woman’s right to choose. There are all sorts of ethical questions surrounding the creation and implantation in IVF. The woman has likely though about them. Thought hard.

When my wife and I started IFV (but bailed the first day) we had though hard about the ethical issues. In all likelihood, we thought harder about it than anyone except the ones who’s job it is to think about those things. The conclusion? It’s the woman’s right to choose. 

I don’t envy that choice, the choice to reduce from 2 to 1. It’s clear that the doctors won’t back her decision by saying that that’s what’s gonna give the best outcome. And there’s something in our culture that assumes some sort of mystic bond between twins (but not a corresponding bond for other multiple-sets). So the surviving one becomes a living reminder of the twin-that-could’ve been. There is tremendous pressure for her not to reduce.

I don’t envy her choice at all. But it’s still her choice. And I can see why it would be incredibly hard to make that choice.

With some of the families in the article, it’s clear that they realized “We can’t take care of this many kids!” And there’s a lot of implication that this is not a very good reason to reduce. But my perspective, as the disabled primary care-taker of two kids, is *don’t take on more than you know you can handle.* There are limits to what you can do; do everything in your power to stay within those limits, or you will f-up your job as a parent. If that means reducing, then do it.

So, I didn’t end up feeling terribly conflicted about this essay. I’d already worked through the ethics before we started IVF, and I went though another round of analysing the ethics of parenthood and responsibility when I became disabled.

In the end: it’s the woman’s right to choose. For a variety of reasons, I will never find myself in a place to make that choice, so I can only imagine how hard that choice is to make. But she’s the one who knows what she wants and what she can handle—she’s the only one who can make the decision, and none of us are in a position to say that her decision was the wrong one.