What if there was only one?

A woman from my MoM group posted this article from Elle on her Facebook yesterday:
http://www.elle.com/Beauty/Health-Fitness/Fertility-Treatments-Would-You-Get-Selective-Reduction

Now, I'm guessing that the link won't work forever, so I'll quickly summarize. It's an article about a woman who underwent fertility treatments, got pregnant with twins and chose to reduce her twins down to one baby. She did CVS to determine if they were both healthy (they were) and the sexes (she chose to keep the girl).

This article has sparked some interesting commentary, with most people saying that they could never choose to reduce healthy twins (3 or more, yes, but not twins). The staunchly pro-choice, womans' right to choose side of me will defend this right until I die. But the 37 year old pregnant me wondering if I'll ever have a chance to get pregnant again side of me wasn't so sure.

When I found out I was pregnant with twins, I was originally told that they were fraternal. I spoke with a genetic specialist to find out what my options were for finding out as much about the health of the fetuses as possible and when the optimal time was to do anything about them. Ultimately, I decided to only get the nuchal fold tests done, primarily because I found out that the twins were identical, not fraternal, so if one was determined to have Down Syndrome or one of the Trisomy problems, both of them would have it. The nuchal fold test (a marker for DS) came back with pretty low odds, around 1 in 400, I think, so I opted not to get CVS or an amnio as both tests carry pretty high loss risk for twins sharing a placenta. If the tests had shown a high marker for DS or something else, I would have tested further. I know that I could not have handled two DS babies (or worse) on my own. I don't believe that people aren't given more than they can handle (as many of my colleagues and friends have told me for "support"); I think people are given more than they can handle every day. I have a friend who, pregnant at the same time as me, chose to terminate her pregnancy when she found out the fetus had DS. She now has a healthy baby girl. I'm pretty sure I would have done the same. I have a hard enough time handling normal (so far!), healthy twins. I can't imagine if one or both had special needs.

Now obviously, there's no guarantee that both the boys are "normal". They could develop autism or mental illness or have a debilitating accident. But I can't do anything about that and so I try not to stress too much about it. And, when having the testing done, I knew in my heart that I couldn't reduce if the fetuses seemed healthy; to choose one over the other. But I don't fault the author of that article. She did what she and her husband felt was best for their family and I can't fault her for that.