BioEdge
Michael Cook
It is a truth universally acknowledged that defending an opinion on abortion will make at least half of one’s readers unhappy. But Joona Räsänen, a Finnish bioethicist at the University of Oslo, defends an opinion on abortion in the Journal of Medical Ethics which is bound to make all of them unhappy.
He tackles the controversial question of foetal reduction: killing one or more foetuses in a multiple pregnancy. This may happen when one of them is diseased or has a birth defect or when the mother feels incapable of caring for more than one child. It often happens after IVF when a woman ends up with triplets or quadruplets – or even octuplets. Some doctors have refused to “reduce” the pregnancies because they regard it as immoral. . . [Full Text]