When One (baby) Is Enough (ultimate in cold selfishness)

I grew up in a working-class family in Pennsylvania not knowing my father. I have never missed not having him. I firmly believe that, but for much of my life I felt that what I probably would have gained was economic security and with that societal security. Growing up with a single mother, I was always buying into the myth that I was going to be seduced in the back of a pickup truck and become pregnant when I was 16. I had friends when I was in school who were helping to rear nieces and nephews, because their siblings, who were not much older, were having babies. I had friends from all over the class spectrum: I saw the nieces and nephews on the one hand and country-club memberships and station wagons on the other. I felt I was in the middle. I had this fear: What would it take for me to just slip?

Now I'm 34. My boyfriend, Peter, and I have been together three years. I'm old enough to presume that I wasn't going to have an easy time becoming pregnant. I was tired of being on the pill, because it made me moody. Before I went off it, Peter and I talked about what would happen if I became pregnant, and we both agreed that we would have the child.

I found out I was having triplets when I went to my obstetrician. The doctor had just finished telling me I was going to have a low-risk pregnancy. She turned on the sonogram machine. There was a long pause, then she said, ''Are you sure you didn't take fertility drugs?'' I said, ''I'm positive.'' Peter and I were very shocked when she said there were three. ''You know, this changes everything,'' she said. ''You'll have to see a specialist.''

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ''Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?'' The obstetrician wasn't an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.

Having felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn't want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter asked, ''Shouldn't we consider having triplets?'' And I had this adverse reaction: ''This is why they say it's the woman's choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That's easy for you to say, but I'd have to give up my life.'' Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

The specialist called me back at 10 p.m. I had just finished watching a Boston Pops concert at Symphony Hall. As everybody burst into applause, I watched my cellphone vibrating, grabbed it and ran into the lobby. He told me that he does a detailed sonogram before doing a selective reduction to see if one fetus appears to be struggling. The procedure involves a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus. There are a lot more complications when a woman carries multiples. And so, from the doctor's perspective, it's a matter of trying to save the woman this trauma. After I talked to the specialist, I told Peter, ''That's what I'm going to do.'' He replied, ''What we're going to do.'' He respected what I was going through, but at a certain point, he felt that this was a decision we were making. I agreed.

When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can't believe we're about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ''Can Peter stay?'' The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.

Two days after the procedure, smells no longer set me off and I no longer wanted to eat nothing but sour-apple gum. I went on to have a pretty seamless pregnancy. But I had a recurring feeling that this was going to come back and haunt me. Was I going to have a stillbirth or miscarry late in my pregnancy?

I had a boy, and everything is fine. But thinking about becoming pregnant again is terrifying. Am I going to have quintuplets? I would do the same thing if I had triplets again, but if I had twins, I would probably have twins. Then again, I don't know.

Sounds like this is her.

Also:

If abortion were connected to actual women--people like my friend Amy Richards, who had an abortion at 18 and a selective reduction last year when she found she was pregnant with triplets, or Nancy Flynn, who was a single mom finishing her BA at Cornell when she had an abortion and who told me she would "never have been able to have the rich life I've had and help my son as much as I have if I'd been the single mother of two children"--perhaps the mounting restrictions wouldn't pass so handily. To paraphrase the late poet Muriel Rukeyser: What if women told the truth about their abortions? Even if the world didn't split open, this paralyzing issue might.

From here. A letter about I am not sorry.com

amy richards

When Amy Richard s graduated from Barnard College in 1992, she did not know that her summer project would be the beginning of her career as a feminist activist, writer, and organizer. Amy expected to use her degree in Art History to work in a museum or gallery. Instead, after she organized Freedom Summer ’92, a cross-country voter registration drive, Amy went on to co-found the Third Wave Foundation, a national organization for young feminist activists between the ages of 15 and 30.

For a decade, Amy led Third Wave as it grew from a small grassroots organization into a national institution. At Third Wave, Amy created and sustained the organization’s program areas—grant-making, public education campaigns and a national membership—and initiated projects such as "I Spy Sexism," a public education and postcard campaign encouraging people to take action on the injustices that they witness every day, and "Why Vote?," a series of panel discussions on funding for the arts, education, reproductive rights, and affirmative action. Through this leadership, Amy became a spokesperson and leading voice for young feminist issues. This launched her on the lecturing circuit and brought her invitations to appear in videos, books and media interviews offering her perspective on current events and especially youth and feminist culture. Amy has appeared in a range of media venues including Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, Oprah, Talk of the Nation, New York One and CNN. Amy was publicly distinguished as a leader in 1995 when Who Cares magazine chose her as one of twenty-five Young Visionaries. She has gone on to win accolades from Ms. magazine, which profiled her in "21 for the 21st: Leaders for the Next Century,” Women’s Enews, which in 2003 named her one of their “Leaders for the 21st Century,” and the American Association of University Women, which recently chose her as a 2004 Woman of Distinction.

As Amy moves into her thirties and away from her commitment to Third Wave, she makes her living as a lecturer, writer and consultant. Amy was the interim director for Twilight: Los Angeles, a film by Anna Deavere Smith, where she oversaw a national educational program that addressed race in America . She has also consulted to Scenarios USA on the distribution of their teen educational videos, to Gloria Stein em on her writing and political commitments, and to the Columbia School of Public Health on the long-term negative health consequences of welfare reform. Amy is also the voice behind Ask Amy, the online advice column she launched at feminist.com in 1995.

Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Amy’s first book, which she co-authored with Jennifer Baumgardner, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in October 2000. Amy and Jennifer just completed their second book, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, and together they also created Soapbox, a lecture agency for “speakers who speak out.” Amy’s writings have also appeared in The Nation, The LA Times, Bust, Ms. and numerous anthologies, including Listen Up, Body Outlaws and Catching A Wave. Insight Guides recently hired Amy to write a shopping guide toNew York City . She is also very involved with the organizations on whose boards and advisory committees she serves, Third Wave, Ms. Magazine, Choice USA, the Sadie Nash Leadership Program, feminist.com and Planned Parenthood of New York City.

Ms. Richards and her friend Baumgardner are radical feminists. I feel sorry for the father. I bet he doesn't know how badly he is screwed up.

Peter asked: "Shouldn't we consider having triplets?"

This is his first comment on the news of triplets. This threw the murderous mother into a fit of rage.

He replied, ''What we're going to do.''

This is his next comment, where he agrees to the murder.

You wrote: She just doesn't sound like a person willing to be persuaded to me.

I fail to see where he even tried to persuader her. One question, asking a person to consider allowing babies to live is not an effort of persuasion.

Were this man on trial for being an accessory to homocide (a crime in the eyes of the law), his inaction would constitute guilt. Infanticide is a "fundamental right" in the eyes of the law; however, this man is still an accessory to it.

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