This article is the contribution of a Jesuit priest, a teacher of medical ethics at Uppsala, to a debate inspired by a Swedish official report "The pregnant woman and fetus--2 individuals. On fetal diagnostics. On late abortions." In a society which depends upon a structured consensus as much as Sweden does, the report has been criticized for not making clearer recommendations. The author points out that the ethical dilemmas involved are so complex that they cannot be treated from a simple either/or point of view. Fetal diagnostics, for example, serve the cause of life when the aim is to avoid abortion of a healthy fetus and make it possible to cure, even at the fetal stage, or to strengthen prospective parents' readiness to accept a handicapped child. The use of fetal diagnostic for sorting out damaged and sick fetuses, however, is selective abortion and implies a violation of the principle that all human life is of equal value. The question is no longer if one will have a child or not, but which child will one have. This collision of values has inspired so many polemic statements that it is worthwhile recalling that there is always a tension between the ethically desirable and the politically possible, The report has succeeded in formulating the ethical principles in spite of the impossibility of seeing them presented as concrete recommendations. Even so, Thomas Aquinas wrote in 13th century that one cannot always apply ethical rules to laws of society. That can lead to more evil than good.