Abstract

We argue that politically and religiously conservative areas tend to lead to distortion of the flow of risk information in ways that appear to reduce the apparent need for reductions from a medical-risk point of view. They also minimize the credibility of non-medical risks experienced by patients. Understanding that this type of investigation is fraught with difficulties of definition and analysis, we bring to bear two different sources of data to engage this dialog. First, we examine in some detail medico-legal testimony in settled cases, to flesh out the ways in which processes of distortion may take place with respect to risk and options for dealing with it. Second, we use qualitative comparative analysis to examine a set of selective reduction cases from diversely conservative environments around the world in the period from December, 2014 through April, 2015 for which the main issue has been the advisability of reducing from two or three fetuses to one. We conclude that external conservative cultural forces may undermine the treatment of patients seeking selective reduction in several ways. From these analyses, we make recommendations for intervention.