An article in the Guardian on family planning states that 1/4 of births in the world are unplanned. Also 42 million abortions have occurred with over 68 000 women killed.
The Abortion Act 1967 (mainland UK) states that abortions must be carried out up to 24 week from the point of conception in licensed clinics or hospitals. Legally two doctors must agree that the abortion would cause less damage to the mother that continuing with the pregnancy (physically and mentally). However an article published last April in the Telegraph reported of an Italian baby who survived 20 hours after being aborted at 22 weeks. The hospital chaplain discovered the baby, who had been aborted after it was discovered that he was disabled, still breathing and was transferred to a specialist neo-natal care unit. As an Italian citizen, the baby boy now has the right to health and legally has the right to life.
This article has highlighted how a child at 22 weeks (2 weeks short of the upper limit of abortion) is able to survive outside the mother's body. In 2005 a mother who had tried to abort her son three times gave birth at 24 weeks to her son who is still alive today. Should the upper limit of abortion be lowered? If a foetus of 24 weeks can survive as an individual, are they considered a person with potential rather than a potential person? By 24 weeks a foetus is nearly fully developed; it has little fat but has fully formed taste buds and it's brain is rapidly growing. This brings up ethical issues looking at what age does a foetus become a child? Philosopher, Glover uses a cake analogy to illustrate the difficulties of differentiating between the two. When you are baking a cake, when do you consider it to be a cake? Is it a cake when it's eggs, flour, butter and sugar? How about when it's a tin full of smooth cake mixture? Or is it not a cake until it comes out of the oven fully baked and ready to eat? From this analogy you can see that it is not logically possible to pinpoint the moment an unborn child goes from a cluster of cells to a foetus to a human being.
In June 2010, an article against lowering the upper limits of abortion states that at 24 weeks a foetus cannot feel pain. According to the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists, at this stage the brain is not developed enough to experience pain or consciousness. The studies have suggested that when a child is aborted at the upper limits (due to foetal abnormalities or risk to the mother's health) the chemical environment in the uterus induces 'a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness' and the foetus does not suffer. I think there are however still issues around whether this is ethically right, considering that they may be fit enough to survive outside the uterus.
One particular article more recently in the news (The Guardian 23/09/11) which caught my attention looks at an American couple who have made the decision to reduce their pregnancy from twins to a single foetus.
After 6 years of fertility treatment, a 45 year old lady became pregnant with twins and at 14 weeks decided to abort only one of her unborn children. She explained that since she had created her children artificially, she felt she had the choice to terminate one of their lives. For her the decision was easy, she believed that of she had 2 children she would only be able to give them half the love that they deserved. I can imagine that mothers who have more than one child may argue that it doesn't matter how many children you have, you will still have unconditional love for that child. If you have 4 children, does that mean that you only love each child a quarter of the amount that a single child would receive.
The procedure requires injecting potassium chloride into one of the foetus' chest. Over time it then shrivels overtime and remains in uterus until birth. The physicians need to view the procedure under an ultra sound scanner, which is visually explicit and can be quite disturbing.
There is something about separating twins that we seem to find more controversial than aborting a single child. Is this because we see twins as being lifelong best friends? Or is it because we can not imagine having to select one child over another. For that surviving child, finding out that you had a twin brother or sister who your parents chose to kill, must be something overly difficult. When the child realises that there was a 50% chance that they themselves would be terminated, I cant even start to imagine how that might affect them psychologically.
Some may say that aborting only one child is somewhat better than aborting both twins as this would mean the loss of only one life. However others believe that choosing one over the other is actually worse. I think this story is complicated by the fact that fertility treatment has been used. The family must have had some idea that there was a chance of having a multiple pregnancy when they decided to have the fertility treatment. Now they believe that they can pick and choose to reduce the pregnancy. Some may argue that this is just a step to far, however others may question why this is unacceptable when abortion is becoming increasingly accepted in society.
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