W’ hen I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.” The quotation is from Amy Richards in the July 18 New York Times Magazine on why she terminated two of the triplets she carried.

When I first read Ms. Richards’s words, I had just returned from my weekly shopping trip at Costco and had just unpacked the huge Hellmann mayonnaise jars, the triple pack of Heinz ketchup, the 18-roll pack of Scott’s toilet tissue, and various other mammoth sized consumer goods that this shopping club excels in.

In a minor way, I can identify with Ms. Richards, because I moved to Staten Island a week after giving birth to my third child. I have never regretted my decision and you must forgive me if there are times when I can’t help but feel a little smug about it.

Had I been an ardent pro-choice advocate like Ms. Richards, I would have aborted my daughter Dana so I could remain living in the two-bedroom high-rise apartment in Manhattan’s Waterside Plaza.

I would also have aborted Danielle, Wesley, and Jessica, who were all conceived in Staten Island because, according to Ms. Richards’s theory, I never left the house. It is astute of Ms. Richards to regard Staten Island as the family-friendly borough because it is certainly that.

When I still lived in Manhattan, I’d venture out to 23rd Street with my son in the stroller and a toddler by my side. Shopping was an ordeal because the smaller stores would not permit strollers clogging up the aisles. I was always grocery shopping because I could only buy what I could hold in a shopping cart and I did not own a car.

While there are many wonderful playgrounds in Manhattan designed to stimulate creative exercise and develop a child’s imagination, they can be a hassle to travel to and from the apartment.

Once upon a time, I was determined to raise my children in Manhattan because I was born there and I’ve always loved this great city, but I also realized that this borough has not always returned that same love of progeny if it comes in multiple packages.

The idea of moving out to Staten Is land was so abhorrent to Amy Richards that she did what many mothers would find detestable. Here’s more from Amy: “When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can’t believe we’re about to make two disappear.”

Disappearing heartbeats are of no concern to smart modern women like Ms. Richards and she certainly has plenty of company. Lindsay Beyerstein has a master’s degree from Tufts and on her blog site writes that Amy Richards is a role model. She is puzzled by the outrage of Ms. Richards’s selective abortion. On her Web site she writes: “Many women don’t realize that selective reduction is an option. Thanks to Richards, some women who would otherwise have terminated their entire pregnancies may choose to carry their preferred number of fetuses to term. For that, both pro-choice and pro-life activists should salute her.”

Ah, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, you were so right when you warned of that slippery slope of defining deviancy down. Yes, let’s salute the pioneering women on the far left who’ve championed the right of women to make the heartbeats of perfectly healthy children disappear because they’re simply too inconvenient. I place myself proudly on the far right where such cold and calculated decisions are still regarded as evil.

Dare I say that archaic word ‘evil’? Abortion, euthanasia, infanticide are now routine procedures that extinguish the heartbeats of living humans. Planned Parenthood is selling T-shirts with the words I HAD AN ABORTION proudly emblazoned on them. What is that supposed to mean? Does abortion now come with its own special cachet?

But what do I know. I live in the boondocks known as Staten Island. It’s the borough with the lowest crime rate. It’s also the greenest borough with the old-fashioned values of faith and family, and it’s the borough where American flags still fly on our pickup trucks and where “Support Our Troops” signs and yellow ribbons are everywhere.

At the end of her essay, Ms. Richards wrote, “I would do the same thing if I had triplets again, but if I had twins, I would probably have twins.”

Yes, Amy wouldn’t like it here. Staten Island is no place for anyone with your elevated survival instinct that lacks any room or compassion for your helpless, inconvenient, unborn children.