Researchers at the University of Osaka Hospital in Japan performed multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) — also known as “selective reduction” — surgeries in 10 cases of multiple pregnancy in 2024, according to The Japan Times.
Key Takeaways:
- Japan’s Maternal Health Law does not consider selective reductions to be abortions; the country has some abortion restrictions in place.
- Selective reductions are a legal “gray area” because Japan’s abortion law states that in an abortion, a preborn child is removed from the mother’s body; in selective reduction, the child is killed and then absorbed by the mother’s body.
- The very first MFPR selective reductions were just conducted under the guise of clinical research in the country.
- Researchers noted that women had anxiety regarding selective reduction; one professor believes that doing these procedures in a hospital setting may help women to eliminate any guilt they might feel for killing their preborn children.
- Changing the location of where one’s child is killed isn’t likely to assuage one’s guilt.
The Details:
MFPR is not new to Japan. In 1986, a maternity clinic in Nagano Prefecture claimed that it performed an MFPR selective reduction procedure. The procedure is conducted for ‘multiples’ pregnancies, sometimes resulting from the use of fertility treatments meant to stimulate ovulation.
And yet, even though these MFPR procedures intentionally kill preborn human beings, they are not treated as abortions under Japan’s Maternal Protection Act (MPA), a set of guidelines regulating abortion in Japan.
The procedures entail injecting a feticide by needle through the mothers’ abdominal walls into the hearts of selected preborn babies to cause cardiac arrest and death.
Between March and December 2024, a team spearheaded by Professor Masayuki Endo conducted MFPR on 10 pregnant women in their 20s to 40s, each with multiples pregnancies of twins, triplets, or more. Babies from 11 to 13 weeks gestation were lethally injected with the consent of the mothers, who experienced major complications in their pregnancies.
This was the first time MFPR selective reduction was conducted as clinical research in Japan, with the results submitted to the Japan Society of Perinatal and Neonatal Medicine. All 10 cases led to the deaths of multiple preborn children, reducing the surviving number in each pregnancy to just one or two. The survival rate of those remaining preborn babies was at 89.5% a week following the operations.
According to various news sources, the medical team performed the MFPR surgeries while evaluating the pregnant mother’s psychological states as well as their physical safety. Researchers noted that mothers undergoing the selective reductions needed psychological support. The mothers were uneasy before the selective reductions but reportedly felt somewhat better after they were completed.
The Controversy:
Although the MPA allows for abortion in some social and economic circumstances, selective reduction falls into a legal “gray area” because the MPA stipulates that in order to constitute an abortion, a preborn child has to be removed from the mother’s body. During a MFPR selective reduction procedure, a preborn child killed with an injection of a chemical shrivels and is ultimately absorbed by the mother’s body.
Though obstetrician groups and government councils have since debated whether MFPR qualifies as illegal abortion, there are no explicit regulations on MFPR. The group now known as the Japan Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists pointed out back in 1988 that selective reductions could amount to a breach of the procedure stipulated for abortions.
Endo speculated that because the rate of multiples tends to increase slightly with increased use of fertility treatments, MFPR selective reduction procedures are believed to be on the rise as well.
“If it becomes possible to perform operations at public medical institutions, we may be able to reduce a bit the sense of guilt felt by people who performed operations in private,” Endo claimed. “Because so few medical institutions disclose that they perform fetal reduction, some pregnant women feel conflicted.”
He believes the solution to remediate the guilt of killing one or more of one’s preborn children is “to create a society where this is recognized as a valid option for women with multiple pregnancies.”
As Asahi Shimbun reported, Osaka University intends to cooperate with other institutions over the next three to five years to craft standardized methods of killing preborn children in this manner.
The Bottom Line:
Japan’s declining population and demographic crisis has sparked pressure to regard preborn lives as valuable, igniting calls for tighter implementation of pro-life laws, such as restricting abortions and MFPR selective reduction procedures.
For pro-lifers, the rising acceptance of MFPR sparks concerns about normalizing a utilitarian view of human life, marking an insidious shift toward selective reduction and reduced respect for vulnerable preborn human lives.
Regardless of the setting in which one’s preborn child is killed, guilt is a normal and healthy response to an immoral act. Killing children in hospital facilities instead of independent clinics, or by lethal injection instead of dismemberment, is unlikely to change this.
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