She’s lucky, but it’s a good idea to “have that conversation” (preferably with more than one specialist, to get different opinions) when dealing with a multiple pregnancy as high as 6. Lots of factors, including the mother’s size and other health issues, influence the outlook for high order multiples. For some women, e.g. w/small pelvis, diabetes, and high blood pressure, the chance of getting ANY surviving babies is higher with selective reduction than with trying to carry 6 to term.
Chorionicity and amnionicity (how many placentas and amnionic sacs are shared) is also a huge factor. It’s never a question of just deciding whether or not to randomly pick X number of fetuses to terminate. The specifics of the placentation and amnionic sacs, and the presence of any interfetal transfusion syndrome between fetuses sharing a placenta, dictates what the options are. If a woman has fetuses sharing a placenta and suffering significant twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, one of those fetuses is already doomed, and deciding to allow it to continue developing until it dies, leaving a very large dead fetus in there with the others (and connected to the circulatory system of one of the others) is pretty much a decision to kill all the others who were not doomed from the start. Sometimes reduction really is the “pro-life” option.
All I know is that, as a pro life woman, if I found I was carrying multiples, I would not be able to sentence some of them to death in the hopes that the others might live. I am not God and I could not bear the guilt of willingly killing my own child.
Maybe I’m not as good a Christian as some on this thread but when I think about my own brother with Down Syndrome, I can’t find it in me to have sympathy for this man who killed his less-than-perfect child. I hope his daughter never suffers an accident that renders her less than perfect, or dear old Daddy might pull the plug on her too.
And, about to start my second trimester of my own very first pregnancy, I don’t understand any woman who could agree to have doctors induce premature labor in order to kill her child... I think even less of such women than I did before. Maybe it’s the maternal hormones that make me judgemental. I think I would be a bad pro-life witness right now.
Willing to play God, huh?