As this article from Slate notes, people who are otherwise quite sanguine about aborting babies become queasy when it comes to the “reduction” – an obscene euphemism if ever there was one – of twins. The discrepancy is quite illogical.

Our conscience is given by God and, hardened though it may have become, we know that to abort a foetus is to kill a baby; a new reason to abort stirs suppressed misgivings and makes us question whether what we are doing is right.

The fact that we have, nevertheless, embarked on this new horror is, yet again, a testament to the depths of evil to which we are prepared to sink for the sake of mere convenience.

What’s worse than an abortion? Half an abortion.

It sounds like a bad joke. But it’s real. According to Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, demand is rising for “reduction” procedures in which a woman carrying twins keeps one and has the other aborted. Since twin pregnancies are generally safe, these abortions are largely elective.

Across the pro-choice blogosphere, including Slate, the article has provoked discomfort. RH Reality Check, a Web site dedicated to abortion rights, ran an item voicing qualms with one woman’s reduction decision. Jezebel, another pro-choice site, acknowledged the “complicated ethics” of reduction. Frances Kissling, a longtime reproductive rights leader, wrote a Washington Post essay asking whether women should forego fertility treatment rather than risk a twin pregnancy they’d end up half-aborting.