When the abortion debate hits home.

Dan Neil

Los Angeles Times

I’ve always been pro-choice, said Dan Neil, but now that I’ve personally confronted “the choice,” the abortion debate has taken on sharp new meaning. My and wife and I struggled to get pregnant, but after fertility treatment, four embryos successfully “set up residence” in her womb. Sadly, we learned last month that for the sake of my wife’s health, we would have to sacrifice two of the embryos, leaving two females. At around the same time, the Supreme Court upheld the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. This procedure, in which the fetus is partially extracted from the uterus and then suctioned out, wasn’t a good medical option for us. But the ruling could have “huge consequences” for reproductive medicine. Partial-birth abortion takes place between 12 and 28 weeks, during the second trimester. It wasn’t until our own second trimester that we realized we would have to abort two embryos. Many consider the newly banned abortion procedure particularly gruesome, “but the truth is, there is no such thing as a pretty abortion.” If the government can prevent one type of midterm abortion, why not another? I’m thrilled that I may soon have two daughters. “But I hate to think my girls will have to fight the battles their mothers and grandmothers fought.”

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