A striking situation occasionally occurs in Swedish hospitals: a fetus survives late abortion and then all available intensive care resources are employed to keep it alive. The law permits free abortion through the 18th week of pregnancy, but with permission from the social service authorities, the limit for abortion can be stretched to the end of the 22nd week. At the same time it is possible to save the life of a premature birth down to the 23rd or 24th week. The development of a neonatal advanced care is based upon the assumption that it is desirable to save the life of a human fetus no matter how young it may be. At the same time, legislation which legitimizes free abortion up to a certain period of time expresses the view that the life of the fetus up through that time possesses little or no real value. A recent report by a government commission on the individuality of the pregnant woman and the fetus should have dealt with this ambivalence but did not. One possible way out of this dilemma is for society to take an active role in offering the woman economic compensation for bearing the child to term with a view toward giving it up for adoption. The commission's report compromised in not presenting this alternative as an official suggestion because it is too unpopular politically. The result is that tens of thousands of humans in Sweden every year are denied a chance for normal life because the public allows itself to be represented by politicians who lack the courage or the insight to accept the moral consequences of this decision.