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TORONTO, December 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – For many years, Canada’s lack of any abortion law has made it one of the easiest nations in the world to obtain an abortion. Abortion is taxpayer-funded for any reason whereas public opinion, although sympathetic to abortion availability, has been consistently opposed to this wide-open, fully funded situation. 

But when a Burlington, Ontario mother’s decision to have one of her two healthy unborn twins killed in order to raise the other “in a way that I wanted to,” was reported in the National Post, letters poured into the newspaper’s office – many from twins themselves – expressing deep outrage that the child was put to death.

In the Dec 11 article entitled ‘When is Two Too Many?’ the anonymous mother from Burlington said it was a “complete shock” to learn that she was carrying twins in her 40s, and rejected the idea of having another help care for them.

“We’re both career people. If we were going to have three children two years apart, someone else was going to be raising our kids,” she told the Post. “All of a sudden our lives as we know them and as we like to lead them, are not going to happen.” She went to an abortionist to have the pregnancy “reduced,”

Such “selective reductions” are often used to justify the death of children who are triplets, quadruplets, or more, as often happens with babies produced through in-vitro fertilization. However, the article’s author notes that the demand for killing one of only two unborn babies for economic reasons appears to be rising.

While the article quoted other experts distressed at the trend, the mother says the decision didn’t bother her.

“I’m absolutely sure I did the right thing,” she said. “I had read some online forums, people were speaking of grieving, feeling a sense of loss. I didn’t feel any of that. Not that I’m a cruel, bitter person … I just didn’t feel I would be able to care for (twins) in a way that I wanted to.”

By the following week, the Post editors acknowledged that a deluge of letters had entered their office expressing a range of emotional reactions to the story – including shock, horror, grief, and anger.

“I wonder how any of us would feel if we found out our parents had taken a sibling away from us because it didn’t suit their lifestyle?” asked Bernadette Whily of Toronto. Another called the twin’s abortion “loathsome, narcissistic and simply incomprehensible.”

“I felt sick after reading this article,” wrote Marg Baker of Toronto. “Nothing demonstrates the poverty of spirit of our society more than this subject.”

Still others testified to the incredible, even mystical bond that is observable between twins, one that endures even when one dies very young.

“I am an identical twin,” wrote Pat Moore of Chilliwack, B.C. “I know that you cannot just eliminate one half of a set of twins without taking away a huge part of the survivor.”

Even more fascinating, Dianne Fasullo of Burlington, Ontario referred to research showing that surviving twins “often draw two people in a picture representing themselves, even if they did not know they were a twin,” something she says she’s observed in her own daughter – who lost her twin sister one day after birth.

Judith Jung of Toronto shared a similar story. “At 22 months old, that baby told me that when she was born there was a baby boy, then asked where he was,” wrote the mother, whose son, the girl’s fraternal twin, died in miscarriage. “She repeated the same question exactly one year later, asking me if he had died.” Jung noted that “my family and I were too disturbed by this article to read the whole thing.”

A letter printed online noted that the story seemed to awaken a dulled nerve regarding the dignity of unborn children. “It seems this sad story has actually made the ‘pro-life’ stance more fashionable,” wrote Judy Anderson. “It’s about time.”