This article is an initial attempt to compare the pre-abortion disclosure mandates that have proliferated in the two decades since the Court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey with laws that, in the context of assisted reproduction and reproductive health, require specific disclosures beyond a state's baseline informed consent requirements. While some scholars have characterized pre-abortion disclosure laws as sui generis, they share some important common features with disclosure mandates in the context of oocyte donation and other reproductive health procedures. This (...) article suggests that in critiquing pre-abortion disclosure mandates, scholars and advocates should be careful to differentiate the use of disclosure laws in general from uses where the government interest conveys a moral preference against a particular procedure. (shrink)

Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of fetal reduction in the case of a twin pregnancy. I argue (...) that in the case of a twin pregnancy, there are two intuitively plausible claims: abortion is morally permissible, and it is morally wrong to abort just one of the fetuses. But since we should choose morally permissible acts rather than impermissible ones, the two claims lead to another highly implausible claim: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. Yet, this does not seem right. A plausible moral theory cannot advocate such a pro-death view. Or can it? I suggest ways to solve this problem and draw implications for each solution. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Discussion about the similarities and differences between abortion and multi-fetal pregnancy reduction, including the tug-of-war over naming, highlights ongoing contestation about the relationship between the law, ethics, and women's bodies. Ultimately, the law must root itself in the realities of pregnancy including the physical and social consequences that any pregnancy creates for the woman who carries it.